


Here's to the Mistakes

by Tanacetum



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Lovers, Gen, Meddling Gods, Mistakes were made, POV Multiple, Past Brainwashing, Suicidal Thoughts, eventual blupjeans, eventual taakitz, general dark themes cos there's an apocalypse on so heads up, necromancy is bad and zombies are annoying, the au where davenport is better off than in canon but everyone else gets hit, the dark fantasy AU no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-20 23:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 53,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13728039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanacetum/pseuds/Tanacetum
Summary: The gang meets after getting recruited by gods to fight a zombie apocalypse. But before that they all make some bad decisions.





	1. Walking blind

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this thing is gonna end happy.

They were three days in Westgate when they realized something was deeply wrong. But they didn’t know how to make sense of the signs, and then it was too late.

Piracy, thievery, highwaymen; these things were normal, up and down the coast. Lup and Taako had followed caravans along the bay for years now. The law over Dragonscoast was patchwork at best, policed by a transient cast of rival forces that spent most of their time grandstanding against each other. The only constants in the region were the flow of wealth from trade at the ports, and the organized crime that exploited it.

This suited the twins just fine. Taako didn’t even keep track of the human governments anymore. Their territories and leadership changed by the year, and none of it affected two travel-hardened elves bouncing from caravan to caravan. A bad week might see them making a hasty exit under invisibility, leaving the rest of the traveling party to get sacked. But they’d had nothing but good weeks for ages. They’d even made the coin to pick up new spellbooks, and privacy in the chuck wagon to study them in between cooking meals.

They’d passed through Westgate with five different caravans. The town was a hollowed-out shell of its former self, with warrens of unclaimed, half-ruined houses that made perfects squats. There had been a war when the twins were children. But that was more than a hundred years ago.  In recent years, a newly-reopened port had transformed Westgate into a hub once more. The arterial streets stretched from the docks in the north to the road to Neverwinter in the west and were always abuzz.

Taako had thought he felt a literal buzz, hours before the end. He chalked it up to nerves.

 

The Taako of nine days ago never would’ve conceived of this plan. The Taako of today had seen everything else fail. He and Lup had always hung around the docks to pick up unguarded valuables, or hidden away in crumbling houses in the abandoned boroughs. They’d never been to the south side of town. That was where the wealthy people had their manors, crowded around a luxury shopping district and the seat of government.

Had their manors, past tense. Now the snobby part of town was a charming field of rubble. Only two edifices still stood: the outer wall of Westgate, and a massive stone keep.

Taako had never seen the Burgermeister’s Palace before, but he knew it should’ve been right at the wall, flush on the south side. The mounded wreckage of glass and greying stone at the base of the keep was probably it. The keep itself rose as a hulking, sharp-edged construction of black stone and dizzying precipices. It was definitely committed to a _style_. That style being ‘ghoulish’ and ‘depressing’.

Nine days ago, some great power had seemingly dropped a several-thousand ton castle of solid obsidian out of the sky. Taako was determined to get gone before the who or the why entered his life.

It had already taken too much time, planning around the shadowy barrier that had swallowed Westgate whole.

 

This was the plan: get through the keep and get out. Every other fool in town had tried to beat down the barrier near the docks or at the road. Taako had held Lup back, convinced her to save her magic. They’d hidden on a rooftop to watch.

The barrier was undefined mist for three inches and then more solid than rock. The mist swirled in greys and blacks, with occasional streaks of white arcane energy. It would have looked like a stormcloud if not for the fact that it looked nothing like a stormcloud. In fact, staring at it made Taako’s head hurt. His transmutation expertise told him nothing of the barrier’s construction beyond that it would be unfathomably stupid to cast touch spells on it.

Of course he got to see someone try that. The barrier extended down through solid earth as well as closing out they sky. Thrown rocks bounced right off. Swords couldn’t pierce it. Spears also couldn’t pierce it, which the crowd really should’ve been able to guess after the sword test. By all rights the bullet test should’ve ended with someone getting hit by ricochet, but the crowd got lucky with that one.

The guy who stuck his hand into the mist and then tried to cast a touch spell did not get lucky. He should’ve given up after his fire cantrips were absorbed with muted pulses. The mists billowed out and consumed him in a flash of nauseating, impossible colors. The back of his skull and strips of skin from his shoulders fell away in a torrent of gore.

The twins had fled, stumbling across rooftops while half-blinded from the afterimage. They didn’t stop running until the rising shrieks faded in the distance.

 

Picking their way across the field of rubble unseen was a cinch. They’d been avoiding other survivors and the shattered remnants of the town guard for days. Later, when a motley force of blue-uniformed rescuers began organizing at the docks, they’d avoided them too. The twins wouldn’t let themselves be rounded up. There’d be no evacuation. The barrier cut through the sea as well as land, trapping a stagnant crescent of water around the docks. They’d overheard survivors claiming that a huge merchant galleon, bisected, had taken hours to sink.

Getting into the keep had also been a cinch. The mounded rubble of the palace dipped into a fetid moat where it rimmed the keep’s walls, and they had to cast invisibility to sneak past a shambling procession of figures on the first bridge. But the second bridge was empty. The gate beyond yawned wide and unguarded.

It was far too easy. But the twins were confident in their magic, arrogant with their caution. The keep wasn’t just flush with Westgate’s outer wall; before he even saw it, Taako knew that the mists thinned at its edge, passing to and into the wall without destroying it. This was the weakest point in the barrier.

Doubtless the master of the keep wanted to come and go as they pleased. So there was a chance they were absent. Maybe not a great chance. But Taako and Lup were vagabonds, sneak-thieves, and wizards. They had decades of experience in skirting danger. They had their elven agility and darkvision. They had each other, picking their way silently across the smooth obsidian floor, hand-in-hand. No one else in Westgate had as good a chance of escaping as them.

They were captured with the outer wall in sight.

 

They’d seen roving packs of humanoid figures all over Westgate. Forms of sickly-pale skin, ragged with scars, clothed in tatters. And those were the survivors. The twins had mostly stuck to the rooftops, lightening their bodies and casting featherfall to make impossible jumps. They’d slipped through windows to raid for supplies. Westgate was a bigger town than the people it held; it was child’s play to slink around a corner and disappear, the few times they encountered anyone on the street. The twins spied on other survivors from balconies and rafters, slipped into attics unseen, rested in shifts.

They’d witnessed several vicious fights before they realized that not everyone walking the streets was still living.

 

The zombies were easy. Lup could incinerate entire packs of them and still have the energy to forage for dinner afterward. Taako could pull his sister through a door and slam it behind them, his hand leaving the knob a twisted, unmoving hunk of iron. The undead pursued the living, and other groups of survivors were always noisier targets than the twins.

But doors within the keep were few and far between. The stone façade hid a worm-eaten hollow of spartan corridors and vaulted ceilings, cut across by grand staircases spiraling upwards at random. A preternaturally chilled wind whipped from each room into the next through wide archways. As they ran deeper and the wind died they could finally hear the rush of footsteps pursuing them. The air only grew colder. The twins had gotten used to the aura of dread and decay pervading the town. But the sensation heightened in the keep to a palpable, oppressive pall that made Taako’s teeth ache at the roots.

They’d been playing cat-and-mouse with the patrolling undead. Undead who had no business haunting empty corridors in these numbers, so far from the bands of survivors holding the line near the docks. The twins hadn’t discounted the idea of a guard. They’d planned on pursuit, and prepared spells accordingly. But they had to run far to break line of sight in the empty keep, and Taako had nothing to transmute except the glassy obsidian of the halls.

Lup was flagging. Taako pulled her around a corner, recast invisibility over them both, and then dragged her back and onwards on a sharp left. He was leading now—she’d been blasting fireballs over her shoulder for four out of the last six corners they’d taken. Now Lup was disoriented, and her hand jerked in his as she stumbled.

He turned to help her catch her balance. Instead, he saw a sickly-green figure digging its claws into her other arm, oblivious to their invisibility. Taako’s heart jumped in his throat. He caught the ghoul’s leering gaze; two black eyes, shiny with malice over a flat, pitted nose. It dragged Lup’s forearm to its gaping mouth and bit straight through her jacket.

Lup clamped down a shriek and pulled her hand out of Taako’s. She shoved at the ghoul’s bald head. Flame bloomed from her palm, melting its flesh and filling the corridor with a rancid smell like burning garbage. Her arm _crunched_ in the ghoul’s jaws. Taako shoved his wand into its ear and cast scorching rays directly through its skull. Its eyes boiled away before its jaws slackened enough for Lup to pull free.

“I’m fine, I’m _fine_ ,” she chanted, cradling her arm. She squeezed the wound through her sleeve, blood welling up between her fingers. Taako reached for her and she curled into his arms. “We’re so _close_ ,” she breathed, gasping in pain against his chest. She listed in his grip. “That was my last spell. Taako, _go_.”

“ _Nope_ ,” he said, popping the p. “C’mon, Lulu, we’ve got this. One foot in front of the other.” He adjusted his grip, slung an arm around her waist to support her. He determinedly ignored the way her blood matted his shirt to his chest. Lup breathed deeply and fixed her eyes forward. There was a set of three archways ahead, staggered just out of step. Through the narrow sliver where they aligned the twins could see an open courtyard of flat obsidian. Beyond the courtyard was the craggy sandstone of the outer wall.

The world narrowed to the rush of Taako’s pulse in his ears, the slow drip of blood from Lup’s cradled arm, and the promise of freedom just meters ahead. Lup grew steadier on her feet as they passed through the first archway. They made it through the second at a shambling half-sprint.

Taako’s foot came down on the threshold of the third and the obsidian went matte and soft under it. Lup yanked him backwards, taking his weight on her bad arm with a muffled grunt.

There’s been no sunlight in Westgate since the barrier went up. The twins had been fine with this; the other survivors were mostly human, and had to announce their every movement with torches and lanterns. Sacrificing color for stealth and relying on their darkvision was a no-brainer.

There was a sense of _movement_ , from the archway. Nothing appeared to change. The obsidian corridor stayed empty, the stone cold and flat.

Outside, Taako could see where the barrier met the top of the sandstone wall. Here it was as translucent as a soap bubble. No mists billowed; it just slid into the wall and disappeared. It would be easy for Taako to transmute the stone away, find where the barrier thinned to nothing. But he held himself back. Something was wrong. Some quality of the energy in the air, some dread he couldn’t explain.

Then Taako saw it—the join of the wall to floor shifted. The angle of the seam softened almost imperceptibly. An impression crawled along the archway, thickening its edges.

Taako raised a hand and cast dancing lights in a halo around them.

The smooth obsidian glinted in the light. The black tendrils of shadow sliding over and through the archway, flush with the walls, did _not_.

Lup and Taako scrambled away. The shadows rasped over the threshold after them. They retraced their steps in a rush. They just had to get around a corner and cast invisibility again. They could find another exit, or wait for the shadows to retreat and sneak past. There’d be some way. They were so _close_.

Ahead, the mangled ghoul stumbled into view. It turned its empty eye-sockets toward them, gore streaking its cheeks. Lup drew them to a sharp halt and pulled Taako off to the left.

A band of shadow went taut around Taako’s ankle and sent him sprawling face-first.

“Well, this is going to be a lot easier than I thought!” a figure called. Taako snapped towards the voice and blasted out a cone of cold.

The freezing air sunk into a mass of solid shadow rushing towards them. Taako glimpsed a torso draped in thick black folds, silhouetted against the dancing lights he’d abandoned. Then the tendril around his boot yanked him towards the figure. Lup locked her arms around his chest, tried to pull him free. A massive limb launched out of the shadow and seized them both.

The shadows hefted them like dolls. The figure had gone amorphous, suggestion of a torso swallowed. It boiled with creeping folds of black, freezing and dry as bone, the texture of well-worn leather when they were solid at all. The shadows condensed into it, tendrils pooling at its feet. The hand melded into thick bonds and reeled the twins in. Lup tried to kick it and kneed Taako in the ribs.

The shadow turned the twins to face its bulk. It had no face, but seemed to scrutinize them. Lup kicked at it and connected this time. Her leg sunk into the mass of shadows and stuck there. “You guys really aren’t that sharp, are you?” the shadow commented.

The shadow-thing’s voice was oddly flat. The words just came to be, without the mechanical intermediaries of a throat or lips or even vibrating air. Taako had exchanged psychic sendings with Lup before. The shadow spoke with a similar affect, but Taako was sure it wasn’t actually projecting into his mind. It was just completely ignoring how sound was supposed to behave.

The shadow monster would present a fascinating puzzle if it wasn’t so liable to kill them. “Cover your ears, Lu!” Taako yelled. Then he pointed his wand at where the creature’s face should be, angled as high above Lup’s leg as he could, and cast thunderwave.

The thunderous boom from Taako’s wand was suffocated in the folded shadows. Instead of being pushed back, the creature barely flinched. Taako felt sapped after casting. He didn’t have enough left in him for invisibility. The creature just rotated its grasping limb and dangled the twins upside down. Taako’s face was level with the ghoul’s knees, shambling towards them.

“Back off,” the shadow snapped. A tendril whipped across the ghoul and sent it staggering away with a whine. Then the limb shook the twins roughly.  “Tell me, what was your plan here? You saw the huge black death-castle and decided to come in for a stroll?”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Lup gasped. Taako shifted to look at his sister. Seeing the exhaustion on her face drove home how much trouble they were in. They were freezing, they were exhausted, and they were out of magic. Lup’s mangled arm pressed up against his side, still oozing blood.

This was his fault. He’d been right and he’d still screwed it up for them. He should’ve seen that ghoul coming, not relied on invisibility, prepared different spells. But they weren’t dead yet.

“Hail and well met,” he started, voice wavering. The shadow flipped them upright. Taako fought down rising nausea and continued. “My name’s Taako, and you look like you’re made of curtains. And, just FYI, we had a _great_ plan.”

“Oh, is that right?” the shadow said. “Let me guess: If I would just put you down, you’d show me.”

“Got it in one, my man!” Taako said. He tried for a wavering smile. “My sister—this is Lup, hi—my sister and I have things to do other than be dead. I’m sure you understand.”

“Really, now?” the shadow _chuckled_ , and faint vibrations ran through it. “Should’ve thought of that before you waltzed in here and started slinging spells.”

“What—look man, I’m not sure what you mean,” Taako said. Lup found his hand in the shadows and squeezed.

“Still cracking this nut, huh? Let me spell it out for you. We’ve got something of an idiot-trap for arcane energy here. You’re the idiots, I’m the trap.”

Oh. The survivor, eaten by the barrier. The suffocated thunderwave. Taako was suddenly even less okay being trapped in grasping shadows. His heart knocked against his ribs.

“Well, now that you’ve… Now that we’re just, completely out of arcane energy, are we done?” Taako said. “Yummy yummy arcane energy, you got it all, you’re welcome. But we need to get out of this freezing hellscape and get Lup some medical attention, if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry about this,” the shadow said. It drew its limb to its body, pressing the twins into its bulk. Taako realized they were gliding forward, gathering speed as they slid deeper into the keep. “I know it probably seems a little unfair to you.”

 The shadow hauled them back down the corridors, and then up a swooping incline of black stone, cut through with irregular steps and smooth drops. The twins fought. Lup cursed and writhed, threatening the shadow in a weak, dazed voice. Taako made dry observations and offered bargains, even begged. He smoothed a hand through Lup’s hair and tried to give her what comfort he could. He wound her arm in the hem of his shirt, helped her keep pressure on it. Her jacket was soaked through.

They followed the incline upwards for what seemed like an eternity.  On their left the slope dropped off into the cavernous rooms of the keep below. The wall on their right opened to empty windows at intervals. Thirty meters up, the shadow halted at a massive door cut unevenly with the steps. It extended another limb and knocked. The first blow was soft, but the second rang sharply.

“Enter,” a voice boomed from within, raising hair on the back of Taako’s neck. Lup fell quiet. The door swung open on iron hinges, rust shrieking. A blast of foul, sulfurous air assailed them.

The shadow smoothly descended to a bricked floor a meter below the door. The ghoul tumbled in after it on hands and knees. Taako squirmed to get a look at the room.

They were in a windowless antechamber with rough, uneven walls, floored with mismatched bricks in obsidian and unidentifiable stone. Iron braziers more than two meters tall illuminated a path to a massive grey throne, either carved from the bone of an impossibly large creature or transmuted into one piece. The shadow rasped over the bricks and dumped the twins at the throne’s feet.

The throne was empty, but a sense of pressure lingered over it. Taako pushed himself up to sitting. Lup, insensate in his lap, didn’t rise. He grabbed her shoulders with cold-numbed fingers, turned her to face him. Her eyelids fluttered.

The ghoul bolted past the shadow and lunged for the twins. Taako threw himself over Lup. Before the shadow could react, a vast cloaked being manifested on the throne. The smell hit Taako first; rotten and sour, beyond even the stench of the ghoul. The being raised a hand suffused with black mist. The ghoul seized in place, and then fell dead to the ground.

“So, this is the elf woman who was screaming all the way up the stairs,” the being laughed. It leaned forward on its throne, massive bulk pressing rolls of fat against its robe. The face beneath its cowl was a fanged skull, its eyes black pits with motes of white burning within. Thick horns crowned its head, piercing the cowl to swoop upwards into razor-edged points. It extended a hand tipped with red claws down to the twins. “What do you need from me, that you brought these here?”

“Hello, father,” the shadow said. “I wanted to ask—”

Red claws sunk into Lup’s exposed stomach. Taako screamed. The shadow seized him, yanking him back and away from the throne. He dragged Lup with him across the rough brick.

She didn’t flinch. Her chest didn’t rise. Taako looked up to see the enthroned monster rolling an orb of bright white in its claws, dribbling golden flame like honey.

“ _Father_ ,” the shadow admonished.

The monster grunted. “Unfortunate,” he said, pressing a claw tip into Lup’s soul. The orb compressed in his grip. “Not banshee material, after all. So, what were these wizards after?”

Taako wailed over the shadow’s response. “Please!” he sobbed. “Let her go, you have to let her go—” the shadow mashed his face into the brick. The monster looked amused, still idly squeezing Lup’s soul. He flattened it, rolled it between his palms. The fiery gold sunk into the orb and inflamed it from within.

A shriek rang out. Lup’s voice in fury, echoing once before the monster closed his fist over her.

“Oh gods,” Taako whispered, tears streaking the brick beneath his face. “Please, please let her go. I’ll do anything.” His voice rose and the shadow drew across his face to cut him off.

At this the monster laughed. “You weren’t here to ask me permission to keep these, were you, Kravitz?”

The shadow stilled. “I mean, as a matter of fact, I was.”

The monster laughed again, sides heaving. “Ah-hah, I knew it! I was young once, I _remember_. I suppose you feel idle, with our work so nearly complete.”

Taako didn’t hear the shadow’s answer. He tried to bite down, scream through the shroud over his face. Tears streaming, he felt his fingers pried away from Lup’s corpse one by one. He bucked and fought back, breathless, as he was tugged away from her.

The shadow slid away to allow him a gulp of air. On his throne, the monster was holding Lup’s soul to his open mouth, inhaling deeply.

He lowered her and snapped his jaws shut. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll indulge you. You’re young—I haven’t the patience to wring souls for every drop of energy. It’s wearisome. But I know how you like your games.”

“Thank you, father,” the shadow said.

“But you’re not to play games with _me_ ,” the monster continued, cupping Lup’s soul.  “I won’t suffer him loose in my castle. I don’t want to feel even a dribble of arcane energy from him. You can have a new one if he breaks. And if you drink deeply from my well, if you demand this of me and then grow bored with your gift? I’ll take it back. Order servants as you must, but I don’t want to be reminded he exists.”

“And the woman?” the shadow prompted.

The monster huffed sourly. He rolled Lup’s soul between his fingers a final time, and then flicked the orb of light away. It sailed overhead, trailing red sparks. A faint voice called out for Taako, and was lost as the orb faded from view.

The monster growled. “Wasteful. _Get out_.”

Taako drew in a breath to yell and the shadow clamped over his mouth. It dragged him out of the antechamber, pinning his flailing limbs before he could wriggle free and pitch himself off the stairs. He fought back as it carried him upwards, until his chest heaved and his vision spotted black.


	2. Good intentions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia was going to save Westgate. It ached, to leave Davenport twisting in the wind. But she couldn't compromise her plan for anyone.

Everyone knew the hearing was a farce. The sitting council didn’t even bother to convene in a courtroom; they summoned Captain Davenport to their chamber, flanked by guards. Councilmembers talked amongst themselves, came and went from their seats, even while he was formally questioned. Davenport could’ve been raised to eye-level with the overwhelmingly human council by standing on the courtroom’s bench. Instead they gave him a kitchen stool and called it good enough. The bailiff reclined in his seat, allowed his successor and son to take point on questioning Davenport. The boy loomed head and shoulders over him. But, despite his gnomish stature, Davenport conducted himself with the gravitas and dignity befitting his rank.

Lucretia had a dossier on him. Captain Davenport was not native to Westgate, but his outspoken opposition to the slave trade had elevated him to minor celebrity status among the dock workers. That alone painted a target on his back, one that would’ve surely seen him killed if not for his tendency to bunk down onboard his ship. The elected head of the stevedore’s union was found hanged during their strike just last month. Lucretia can only imagine that Davenport was slowly moving up someone’s target list.

He could’ve survived, though. Could’ve played his cards closer to his chest, waited until he was in a position to do more good. But last week he was commissioned to ship out with a hull of gravel ballast bound for Raven’s Roost in the north. He was supposed to offload the gravel, onboard fabric, furniture, and other crafted goods, and return.

Instead, manifest in hand, he descended into the hull of the freighter to check the cargo personally. He’d ignored entreaties from his first mate, a man who was almost certainly a stooge for one of the criminal enterprises in Westgate. (Not that the first mate would ever be brought to trial. In Westgate, the interests of the criminal syndicates and council families were often one and the same.)

Captain Davenport turned his freighter back to port after being out for only two hours. He’s been tight-lipped about what tipped him off. But, over his examiner’s objections, he was intent on describing the corpses, severed limbs, and other illegal necromantic components he found buried in the gravel in _lurid_ detail.

Lucretia copied Captain Davenport’s every word down faithfully. When his examiner shouted over him, or the councilmembers at her shoulders reached a crescendo in their gossip, she had no trouble filling gaps in Davenport’s tirade. He was a picture of righteous fury. Her heart filled with so much sympathy for his bravery, his resolve. Every word he spoke could’ve come from her own mouth.

Could, but wouldn’t. As the Burgermeister’s secretary, she had access to documents that his opposition could only dream of. _Everything_ came through his office. He examined so little of it that she doubted he was knowingly complicit. But if he hadn’t been too apathetic to review the papers of his office he would’ve seen the same disturbing patterns she did; escalating inconsistencies, blatant cronyism, vanishing funds. A rise in lawlessness and murder centered on the caravan trade. The lack of convictions for anyone associated with council families, no matter how obvious their guilt, stretching back a decade.

The Burgermeister really was the perfect puppet for organized crime. In the years since his election he’d diminished to less than a figurehead. He made no public appearances, gave no interviews. His life, as far as Lucretia could tell, consisted of sitting at the desk in his office, at the desk in the council chamber, or in bed. He ate the food and signed the papers brought to him. He answered questions intelligibly enough. But he was dull, passive; a shadow of the man he’d been during his election campaign.

Lucretia had researched Suggestion, Charm, and other magical ways of altering someone’s mind that could explain the Burgermeister’s behavior. She’d found nothing in that vein in the three years since she was hired. In that time, the Burgermeister had spoken to her for maybe an hour in total. Her orders came from committee heads when they came at all. The council was all too happy to forgo oversight and procedure.

The insight Lucretia had into the operations of Westgate’s government was priceless. Her meticulous documentation doubly so. The bureau in her office concealed expensive coats and reference books behind its locked door. And, behind that illusion, evidence of crime and corruption detailed over hundreds and hundreds of pages.

She was going to save Westgate. Her plan was so close to completion. She could prove the involvement of fifteen council families in crimes ranging from trafficking to embezzlement to assassination. She just had a few loose ends to tie up, a few more people to expose. Then, when her case was airtight, she’d take action. She’d provide copies of her documentation to the press, the temple clerics, and the leadership in nearby towns.

None of Westgate’s trading partners, Neverwinter least of all, would appreciate the shadow cast over the Dragonscoast by the council leadership. Retribution would be swift and well-deserved.

The court’s abuse of Captain Davenport would surely add another folder to her files. It ached, to leave him twisting in the wind. He was a deeply moral gnome, worthy of admiration. But she couldn’t compromise her plan for anyone.

 The Burgermeister presided over the hearing only in name, not even pretending to listen to Davenport undercut the examiner’s leading questions. Tonight was the Lord Mayor’s feast, a grand tradition stretching back generations. This was what held the attention of the councilmembers; the pair at Lucretia’s back had been drooling over the catering for fifteen minutes.

The Burgermeister surely did not share the same preoccupation. Lucretia didn’t believe he was capable of caring about food and frivolity. No, he was probably just exhausted by the day’s activities. The council chambers, the feast hall, the grand ballroom—all were located within the Burgermeister’s Palace, alongside the man’s private residence. Even now, if she strained, she could hear the clamor of servants setting up for the feast. There must be hundreds more people in the palace than usual.

It was strange, then, that the court’s stenographer was absent. Worrisome. Cam was one of Lucretia’s best informants. She could thank him for most of her copies of court records. He didn’t know her intentions, precisely. But he’d always been helpful, even with requests she had no pretext for making. And now he’d been missing all day.

She did not mind taking on his duties. The natural assumption, the conclusion she’d be expected to draw, was that he was skipping work because of the feast. She shouldn’t have knowledge of his dependability, born from dozens of clandestine meetings.

Her pen slipped in her sweaty palm. She’d mechanically copied down two lines of debate over the merits of pâté _en terrine_ versus _de foie gras_ , alongside Davenport’s belaboring of the obvious conclusion that smuggled corpse parts were likely intended as components for necromantic magic. His examiner had made the rookie mistake of challenging this point directly and was now stumbling through fallacious speculation on what else one could possibly do with a shriveled human hand.

Not that all necromancy was illegal. The palace had its own lab, alongside those of the other arcane disciplines. But sanctioned necromantic magics did not overlap with smuggling dismembered corpses. Lucretia hadn’t had much cause to investigate the lab. Nothing beyond the patronage of graverobbers, a sin shared by the medical school. This documentation had come from Cam as well—testimony that she hadn’t found important enough to copy. He’d promised to keep digging and get back to her.

Surely Cam hadn’t disappeared because anyone gathered evidence of _Lucretia’s_ actions. She could think of nothing she might’ve done to garner suspicion. She confided in no one, left no trace of evidence. The councilmember who acted as head justice, Cam’s direct superior, was unfazed by his absence. Raising the alarm this early would only draw attention to her. She couldn’t afford to publicly link herself with Cam. Even if something had happened to him, she had to survive to see her mission through.

The court session finally fell apart under the combined weight of general disinterest and the examiner’s incompetence. The bailiff pronounced a breach of contract and violation of lawful commission, with demurrage to be determined later.  Stripped of his rank and charter, this was surely the end of Davenport’s career. Davenport swept a piercing gaze over the room. Then his guards escorted him off his chair and he ducked out of view.

“Lucretia,” the bailiff called, still reclined in his seat. “Prepare a statement from the former captain, would you?”

The council’s gossiping returned to normal volume. More than a handful of members hadn’t even come back after ducking out. Lucretia struck the lines about pâté from her record and gathered her papers up. “Where are you going?” the bailiff asked.

Doubtless she had been meant to fabricate the statement. “To speak with Davenport, sir,” Lucretia said, playing the ingénue. Davenport’s guards opened the door, revealing a procession of caterers laden chafing dishes and crocks. It smelled phenomenal.

The bailiff relaxed. “Get someone to bring me a plate while you’re at it, would you?”

Lucretia hurried after the guards. She didn’t exactly have a plan. But her time would be no better served observing the council meeting. She caught up with them immediately, just as the caterers passed and they were able to cross the hall.

“Hey Lucretia,” one of the cadets said, smiling at her approach. She recognized him—Avi had served in the guard since before she’d been hired at the palace. It was probably a testament to his character that he was overdue for promotion. He always seemed relaxed, maybe a little louche. Still, Lucretia was willing to ignore his stubble and missing pauldrons. The Lord Mayor’s feast was not a gold star day for professionalism.

They exited to cross through the north courtyard at what was a sedate pace for the humans and brisk for Davenport’s small stature. He kept his eyes focused ahead. Avi didn’t make a pretense of restraining him. Lucretia noticed that Avi was watching her more than Davenport and cleared her throat.

“I’m meant to take the Cap—to take Davenport’s statement. Where might I find him, at an appropriate moment later?”

Avi scratched at his stubble. “Ah—well, he’s under ‘house’ arrest. They’ve put him up at the Black Boot.”

The Black Boot Inn was owned by one of the councilmember’s cousins. It was typical for money paid out by the municipal government to find its way into the ruling families’ pockets. But something more insidious could be afoot. Lucretia remembered the union head, found dangling under the docks at low tide.

If Davenport had half as much sense as honor he’d flee town tonight. Lucretia couldn’t warn him under his guards’ noses. She couldn’t justify skipping the feast to see him. She’d already trailed him further than was appropriate. In another moment they’d be through the palace’s outer gate.

Lucretia stepped back on her heel to turn away and the palace disappeared in a wash of white light.

 

In this space, Lucretia found herself instantly disoriented. The chilly, humid air was replaced by an atmosphere so tepid that nothing registered on her skin. She stood, but with no sensation of the ground pushing against her feet. She blinked, but the white slid in through her closed eyelids. Even the papers in her arms, the cloak around her shoulders, began to take on the insubstantial qualities of a dream.

A presence unfurled in the nothingness. A silhouette took shape, stark white against stark white, a flowing, womanly figure suggested through neither sight nor substance. Lucretia knew she was being watched by this liminal form. It had neither head nor eyes, but it turned to her and she felt it smile.

“Hello, Lucretia,” the woman said. Her voice was strangely human, a feminine lilt that wouldn’t be out of place in the teahouse Lucretia once frequented.

Lucretia envisioned the words she’d put on a page to describe the woman. Dazzling. Luminous. Encompassing. The woman laughed as if in response, and the laugh radiated through her as pearlescent strands of rainbow. Abruptly her voice cracked into a cough, ragged and worn. A golden spindle took shape amidst the rainbow. It coalesced from light, then dropped, spinning down three strands of blue and red and green before catching fast. The spindle swayed back and forth hypnotically, tracing a pattern that extended past Lucretia’s sight.

“Do you know who I am?” the woman asked. Now her voice was aged as a crone’s, as Lucretia’s mother’s had been at her death.

Lucretia did not know. She was in the presence of something significant, something monumental. She could put words to paper and capture an impression of this experience. But she didn’t know what it _meant_.

“No one is meant to understand the scope of Fate, Lucretia,” the crone said, as if in apology. “Though I came here today to meet you. I am Istus.”

Lucretia knew that name. Istus was a _goddess_. Lady of Fate. She had temples in…Dyvers, Refuge, and Greyhawk.   She was not widely beloved. Her domain was progression itself; cause and effect, destiny and divination. Few men drew inspiration from the endless trickle of time. Fewer still dedicated themselves to its preservation. Time was a pestle that ground indiscriminately and fine, rendering mortal loves and lives into so much dust.

“Such poetry!” Istus laughed in a voice like dry tinder. “You’re allowed to speak to me, Lucretia. I am quite literally here for that.”

“H-hello?” Lucretia said. Then she paused, mind reeling. The work that had consumed Lucretia’s life, driven her every thought and action? Just papers that fit in a single, battered bureau. The scandalous corruption that plagued Westgate’s government? Lucretia could reach a town that had never heard of it in a day’s travel. She had no grand purpose, no legacy. Her name was unknown, her thoughts unheeded. Just a few generations ago a war had devastated Westgate. It felt as distant a history to her as the council’s corruption would surely be in a few decades’ time.

On the scales of fate, she was barely a feather. Istus could surely have no reason to seek her out.

Istus’s form swept over to her. The movement resolved into a flash of silver hair limned with blue, in kind, wrinkled eyes, in a withered mouth set deep with laugh lines. Lucretia found herself looking down to meet the goddess’ gaze, anxiety trailing up her spine.

“You are so, so important to me, dear,” Istus said. “Time erodes mortals to dust only in the same sense that rock erodes to soil. Fate is nothing more than the sum of its parts; trillions of tiny, insignificant actions. This world sustains itself on repetition and consequence. This is the truth, Lucretia: the natural order of things is for _everything_ to matter, even long after passing from mortal awareness.

“The tapestry of Fate is flexible and resilient. I loop a thousand thousand small changes in every day, and the weft is more vibrant for it. But I am here over no small change.”

“What—” Lucretia began, and then swallowed. “What’s happening? What can I do?”

Istus beamed. “Do you know how a loom works, Lucretia? Warp supports weft. Each new thread is drawn through, each line added to the last. For the most part, we gods don’t intend for this cycle to end. The tapestry was never designed to be completed.

“But it can be destroyed. The warp can be cut, the weft unraveled. Momentous occasions—and I mean calamities of far greater scope than mere war—have snarled the fabric in the past. It’s my duty and privilege to carefully unknot such damage, so the next rows can be added.

“It is virtually unheard of for the warp itself to be assaulted. Cut through, the whole tapestry would collapse beyond repair. But that is why I am here today.”

“Fuck,” Lucretia said. “What the _shit_.”

“Yes, exactly. I’m here to give you a difficult choice.”

Would it be appropriate, for Lucretia to let her legs collapse before a goddess? She didn’t think so, but it happened anyway. She turned her swoon into a jarringly swift kneel.

Istus shrunk down to meet her eyes. Her silver hair thickened, her face smoothed. She stood as a girl before Lucretia, smile brimming with promise.

“I’m afraid the only deal I can offer is unkind. You will have but two choices:

“For the first—I consecrate you. You face strife unimagined. If I may be poetic: you would be flayed by your own hand. I would ask you to accept responsibility far beyond the normal course of fate, to bulwark the warp through its assault.

“For the second—I absolve you. You are freed from your mistakes. You never know dark days, and your soul sinks peacefully into the Astral Sea.”

“I would die,” Lucretia whispered.

“Yes, always,” Istus said. “You are promised death, Lucretia. It was our gift to you at the world’s inception. I would ask you to forgo that peace for a time, and suffer in my service.”

Lucretia closed her eyes. She felt some small comfort from the sensation, though Istus’ gaze was unbroken. “What happens to everyone else? Will they—will anyone make it?”

“In the immediate future? I would like to leave that up to you. But that burden is so great that I regret asking you to bear it. I’m truly sorry. I wish there was another way.” 

“I accept,” Lucretia said. Every muscle in her body trembled, but she held herself ramrod straight. “It’s—if I—I can’t just stand by. No matter how arduous a task—I’ll do it.”

“I cannot promise you atonement,” Istus said. She brought her left hand up, rainbow dancing along her arms. The spindle whirred and snapped into her open palm. She pressed the thumb of her other against its sharp top until streams of white light bled down over the gold. The light beaded the multicolored threads like dew as Istus twirled them around the body of the spindle, still embedded in her thumb.

Istus raised the spindle and herself with it, drawing up as a young woman once again. “Last chance,” she said, poised over Lucretia’s head.

Lucretia stumbled to face her goddess on her feet. She’d worked for years to save the people of Westgate. This was just—a lot more important, a lot more direct, than she’d envisioned. But—whatever her task was—it needed to be done, and she was not one to shrink from duty. No matter how painful, or dangerous, or lonely.

“Lucretia,” Istus said softly. “You won’t have to do this alone.”

Then she let the spindle drop.

The spindle twirled downwards and Istus’ hand unwound. Rainbows snapped into threads, spiraled out and thickened, answering a call to purpose with more alacrity than the spin of wool to yarn. The spindle hit the ground and rebounded, spooling the thread along its length. The prism of color blurred to a soft white.

With a flick, Istus snapped the spindle back up to her hand, whole once again. She slid the spooled thread off, and it held the shape of the spindle’s shaft. She offered it.

Lucretia dropped her papers to take the entwined threads from Istus’ hand and the white space wiped away like drizzle on a windowpane.


	3. Crushing weight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s a zombie,” Davenport prompted. Killian cursed and unslung a heavy crossbow.

Air pressure slammed into Davenport so abruptly that his sinuses ached. It was a sensation like diving deep underwater, something utterly out of place on a city street. The sounds of the city went gummy and stretched-out with a buzzing whine.

He reeled around in time to see the mousey secretary pelting after them. She had slunk away with a guilty look on her face not even a full minute ago, before they left the courtyard. The brick path to the street cracked and buckled under her feet.  Lucretia caught herself on a white oaken staff. She grabbed for the other cadet at the gate, but he shook her off and fled back towards the palace.

The lights shining along the palace’s walls flared red and guttered. Davenport’s instincts screamed fire. He expected the windows to flicker and smoke. The light sucked to black void and he grabbed at Avi’s sleeve. The human was standing there gaping when they had to _move_.

Fracture lines radiated out from the courtyard. Gouts of dust spewed from between the cobblestones. The palace’s dome sagged, its foundation rose like a wave. The palace’s outer wall leaned inwards like trees under gale-force winds.

Around them, people were screaming and running for cover. Spooked horses dragged an overturned carriage away down the street. Lucretia collided with Avi’s shoulder and helped shove him onwards.

She hadn’t had that staff a moment before. Its head was a looped crook like a needle’s eye, wrapped down to the grip in soft thread.

“Can you cast with that?” Davenport shouted. “They took my focus!” Avi finally found his legs and they dashed across the street. Flagstones cracked like gunshots.

The air burst. The windows in the palace shattered in unison, raining pulverized glass outwards. A fug of miasmic black rose to consume the shards.

There was no cover that’d be enough. Davenport twisted to get a hand on Lucretia’s staff.  It _thrummed_ with magic. Magic that felt like fresh water on linen, like droplets skittering over tarred canvas.  “I can only shield myself, Lucretia!” he shouted. “Can. You. Cast!”

Lucretia didn’t answer him. But she squared up, faced towards the onslaught of debris and black fog. A glittering orb sprang up around them just as billowing dust swallowed the sky.

The chunks of glass and stone made no sound as they struck and rebounded off the shield. The ground fell away to leave them standing on the curve of the orb. They hung suspended for minutes. Avi swore under his breath as the palace crumbled in front of them. Like a cicada shedding its husk, black stone shredded through and burst the white. The sun vanished behind the blanket of smoke spewing from the ruined palace.

“Do you know anything about this, Lucretia?” Davenport asked, when the black spires molting in front of them had shaken off all but the foundation of the palace. Thousands of tons of limestone and lead glass, demolished in moments. The lampposts and trees around them had bowed under the shockwave. An avalanche of rubble spilled forward as the black stone roiled and stretched in its place. A cloud of dust and rubble entombed the shield over their heads.

Lucretia’s arms shook, but the web of crystalline light around them held. She relaxed her grip on her staff. Avi rucked up his shirt and pulled out the largest tin flask Davenport had ever seen. He took a swig from it, then offered it to her.

Lucretia gave the flask a sniff. “It’s brandy—”Avi started, and then she threw back her head and chugged.

She handed the flask—more than half empty—to Davenport, and he took a swig. Then she began her story.

“Istus,” she said, then paused like she couldn’t believe herself. Davenport’s ears perked up.  “She said there was going to be something momentous, something she needed my aid for. It…looks too late to me, to be honest.”

Avi stiffened. “Oh shit, where’s—”

Lucretia shook her head, looking ill. There was nothing she could’ve done to drag the other cadet along and still reach them in time. Davenport took another swig from the flask. The brandy was cheap, but he barely tasted it anyway. He handed it back to Avi for him to finish.

Avi drained the flask and wiped his mouth. He pressed a hand to the shield and leaned against it, squinting at the caked-on dust.  “Uh, with all due respect, ma’am? Besides the guards and the caterers and staff and all, like—fuck ‘em. The whole council.” Avi said.

“There must have been—what, four thousand people in there?” Davenport said, running a quick mental estimate. “I don’t know anything that could’ve done this, outside the councils’ own wizards.”

“Kind of what I was thinking,” Avi said. “And like, all the arcaneums n’shit are under the palace. Were under the palace.”

“I’m—I’m going to let us out now,” Lucretia said. She closed her eyes and swayed against her staff. Slowly, the shield faded and thinned. When it finally tore open dust and gravel rained down around them. They dropped a meter into churned rubble. Davenport hopped back to get away from Avi and Lucretia’s graceless stumbles.

The black stone had twisted itself into a nightmarish keep. At its feet the gutted carcass of the palace settled. The keep’s spires belched clouds of miasmic smog. The tarry plumes rose to a blanket overhead, closing them off from the sky. Orange firelight flickered in the distance, but otherwise it was totally dark. There should’ve been hours until sunset.

Davenport didn’t really believe in grisly executions. But it was grimly satisfying to know that the entire council had been wiped out. Couldn’t have happened to more deserving people.  Westgate had been going to absolute shit under their thumbs. Honest work had been drying up, wages spiraling down. Criminals were beaten in the streets for stealing bread. Criminals in the fancy mansions around the palace got a slap on the wrist and a sack of gold. The state of the town was spoken of with derision or anger in the surrounding ports, depending on how many friends you’d lost.

Davenport had lost plenty of friends. It seemed like every other week a big guild or union name turned up dead. Some men he’d sailed with wouldn’t dock at Westgate’s port at all. But Davenport would never run from commissions, not when the town needed honest work and wages so much. Not when council-owned galleons were smuggling slaves and dark artifacts. More honest eyes on the docks could only help.

He’d earned a little rage. He’d been boiling with it, walking out of that farce of a trial. Now his gut was leaden. It was just him and two human kids left on the street, and gods only know how many corpses under the rubble.

Speaking of corpses—there was movement in the shattered courtyard between them and the keep. No survivors had any business marching in silent columns. Lucretia and Avi couldn’t have noticed them yet—no darkvision.

“Don’t cast Light,” Davenport whispered. Lucretia scanned the rubble with wide, unseeing eyes. “Don’t make a sound.”

The columns stopped their march just across the street. Avi immediately caught his feet in the rubble and fell flat on his face.

The zombies that still had throats moaned. It was the most clichéd thing Davenport had ever been subjected to. He’d just spent hours driving home the point that _necromancy was bad_ to the slimiest bunch of villains ever to shit on common decency—a collection of greedy, conniving, murderous bastards he wouldn’t trust to scratch their own asses.  He welcomed those idiots calling hell down upon themselves, but they couldn’t even _die_ without damning everyone else in town.

Davenport would love to wring their necks with his bare hands. But Avi sounded like he was crying a little and Lucretia was swaying on her feet. Some of the bodies lurching towards them barely had necks to speak of anyway.

“Close your eyes,” Davenport barked. “Do it, now. Ready?” He waited a split second for the kids to mumble an affirmative, and then put a hand on Lucretia’s staff and cast a Hypnotic Pattern of twisting orange around them.

The flash of light illuminated scores of zombies before disappearing. The zombies halted in stupor, but the spell would only hold them for a moment. “Get us some light, Lucretia!” Davenport ordered. He slid down to Avi and helped pull his ankle free. Lucretia, white-knuckled, managed the cantrip. Avi scrambled back up to his feet in shock before Davenport could check his ankle.

“Go, go, go!” Davenport said, shoving at the humans’ hips. The kids broke into a stumbling run. They couldn’t possibly be sauced on a flask split three ways, could they? He wasn’t leaving them behind. Lucretia caught her cloak on a pile of twisted wood and shed it.

Davenport took the lead. Lucretia was steadier now, but it couldn’t be more obvious that she worked a desk job. Avi failed to get the flask back into his belt and dropped it as they rounded a corner. They sped away from the palace, over streets blanketed in debris and dust. Every window they passed was shattered. Wood siding on the surrounding buildings had splintered and peeled back. They turned north to find survivors bringing out candles and lanterns, gasping in shock at the darkness overhead. A few scattered guardsmen marshaled people away from the buildings and towards the center of town.

Market Street was still crowded. Under the pall cast by the smog the people were frantic. Most of the merchants were trying to pack up. There were so few guards left, too few to force the crowds aside for caravan traffic. Only the edges of the crowd were able to peel away into shops and alleys. Shoppers jostled shoulder-to-shoulder, trapped between wagons and horses. In a moment somebody was going to get trampled.

“Don’t wander off, I’ll be right back!” Davenport called. Two lines of adjacent stalls split the center of the street into clogged lanes. The stalls were small tents on wooden framework shoved together, with sheets of canvas staked to the ground separating the tables. He ducked through the crowd to an abandoned stall. From its empty table, he vaulted onto the tent’s framework and shimmied up to the canopy. He took just a moment to gather his bearings. A lamplighter carrying a long pole with a lit wick noticed him from across the street, but mass of the crowd below didn’t have time to look up. Davenport tested his footing and then carefully made his way across the tops of the canopies until he spotted the stall he needed.

He squeezed down the narrow gap between two canvas tents and shimmied free when he reached the ground. He’d picked one of the few shops for spell components, one that had a rack of cheap wands. The proprietor and her assistant were too busy packing the rest of their wares away to notice him snag one and sidle off. He pressed to the edges of the tables and headed against the flow of traffic back towards Avi and Lucretia.

His last stop before climbing back up to the canopy was to grab a sheathed dagger from another stall. A bulky orcish guard bowled through the crowd to block his exit. She pressed forward to corral him against the table.

“You can’t take that,” she said, tusks protruding from her lower lip. Her eyes flashed yellow in the dim torchlight. She was wearing sleeveless mail under a buff jerkin, and Davenport barely came up to its hem. Either one of her muscled arms weighed more than Davenport’s entire body.

He leveled a cool gaze at her and she stepped back. Then Lucretia placed a hand on her bare arm from behind.

The guard startled. “Lucretia!” she said, beaming. “I thought they had you chained to your desk!”

“I’m sorry I haven’t had time to socialize, Killian,” Lucretia said, her smile shaky but genuine. “I had no idea you’d joined the guard.”

“Promoted to Corporal, even! Listen, I’d love to chat, but I’ve got looters to deal with,” Killian said. She caught sight of Avi waving both of his hands frantically. “ _What_ , Cadet?”

Mutely, Avi pointed back towards the south entrance to market street. A group of humans was fleeing from a lone, shambling figure with outstretched arms. Their screams rose above and pierced the hubbub of the crowd.

“It’s a zombie,” Davenport prompted. Killian cursed and unslung a heavy crossbow. She shoved her way through the panicking humans, Lucretia and Avi pressing close behind her. Ignoring the stirrup, Killian used one massive hand to cock the crossbow’s string mid-run. In a few short seconds she planted her feet, nocked a bolt, sighted her shot, and fired.

The bolt split the zombie’s head like an overripe melon. Avi whistled. “Where’s _your_ weapon?” Killian snapped.

“Uh… I was on palace duty," Avi said. “And I left it.”

The forms of a dozen more zombies resolved from darkness, hobbling into the circles of orange light cast by the lampposts. The people headed south to investigate the seat of the crisis changed their minds en masse. Screams caught and spread throughout the crowd.

Killian swore, head whipping from the approaching zombies to the crowd. She only had a handful of bolts in the quiver at her hip. Lucretia planted her staff and swept it from left to right. A smooth barrier of blue light drew across the mouth of the street like a curtain.

The zombies battered themselves against the barrier. “Wow, that’s pretty impressive!” Killian said. Lucretia blushed.

“It’s great, but will it stay there when we get moving?” Davenport said. Lucretia gave him a panicked look. He sighed and raised his new wand. With a wave, the blue barrier was sheathed in an image of thick limestone.

“Good thinking,” Killian said. “Zombies are dumb. They’ll forget about us in a moment, if everyone would just shut up. Can you guys cast Silence?”

“Afraid not,” Davenport said, looking to Lucretia. She shook her head.

“That’s just great,” Killian huffed. She turned to wave at the guards still caught amongst the stalls, motioning them to get moving. The press of the crowd managed to crawl northwards.

“That’s good, we need to get north,” Davenport said. Killian looked down at him. “The council did— _something_ to the palace. Demolished the whole thing. The zombies came out of there.”

“It’s true,” Lucretia said, when Killian turned to her. “I would’ve been… It was pure chance that I followed Davenport and Avi out.”

“I thought Istus did fate?” Avi asked.

“Istus?” Killian said. “Is—is that a god?!”

It was a long story, one that Lucretia waited to recount until the side alleys to Market Street had been barricaded off, the people dispersed to arm themselves or shelter in guardhouses. Avi ran to fetch Captain Bain, who marshaled the guard to confiscate caravan wagons and line them up behind Lucretia’s barrier. She was visibly exhausted when she finally let it drop, kept upright only by her staff. The zombies instantly surged forward and scrabbled at the sides of the wagons. Guards walking a line across the top easily picked them off, and heavy crates and rocks shoved underneath the wagons kept them from crawling in below.

Davenport called for them to shelter at the nearest guardhouse. He didn’t have many spells left, though he chose not to say as much in front of the guards who’d arrested him a week ago. He sat at Lucretia’s side at a table in the central garrison, an old, squat limestone building with slits for windows that crouched at the bend of Market Street towards Neverwinter. Lucretia’s hands shook against the mug of coffee Avi had brought her. A few drops slopped over the rim onto her blue robes. Davenport gently took the mug and placed it on the table.

“That’s—remarkable, but lines up exactly with what my scouts have said,” Captain Bain said, rubbing his face. He was pallid, skin etched with deep, tired lines. “Well, Lucretia? What’s our next move?”

Lucretia startled. “Me—what?”

“You’re the Burgermeister’s right-hand, and the only government official left alive in Westgate,” Davenport reminded her. She was also very young, even for a human. Her hair was snow white, but her dark face was smooth and girlish under the lines of dust and sweat streaking it. But she had steel in her spine and a readiness to protect others. Davenport didn’t know what her relationship with the corrupt Burgermeister had been. But he wouldn’t trade Lucretia for anyone else in city leadership. They were lucky to have her. She’d saved lives today.

“I can’t be—no one skipped out on going to the palace? The council meeting was half-empty.”

“We don’t know yet,” Bain said. “Our lines of communication are broken. You three are the only survivors I’ve heard about so far, and I doubt Istus handed out many more of those staffs. I’ve got men figuring out whether any councilmembers were at their estates.”

“Oh, geez,” Avi said, red-faced. “Do we really want any of them back?”

“ _Cadet_ ,” Bain snapped. “You’re dismissed. Go drink some water. Corporal Killian will talk to you about your _boozing_ later.”

Avi slouched off.  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Lucretia said. “It’s, well, today’s been probably been a, a disaster of a greater magnitude than any of us could have prepared to face.”

Bain slumped back. “You’re right. And, for preparations? We weren’t ready for _this_. We have several thousand displaced and the whole south side of town shut off. We can’t allow survivors back to their homes.”

“Have you pressed the inns?” Davenport asked.

Bain nodded. “We’ve got a few hundred beds from the Black Boot and Bent Mermaid and et cetera. That’s doubled already, putting people on the floor.

“No—the worrisome thing is, we can’t get through that damn fog.”

“What do you mean?” Lucretia asked.

“The black shit. Looks like mist, but it’s solid. Reports say the whole northwest corner of town is cut off from us. Barrier goes right over the road.”

“What about the docks?” Davenport asked.

Bain shook his head. “Almost all of Tidetown is shut in here. The barrier’s a few hundred meters out to sea. I ordered a tug to go investigate. But I don’t have high hopes—my men saw the _Drake’s Tooth_ sinking. Fog got it straight through the center.”

“I think,” Davenport said, staring down Captain Bain, “that we should set up a base in Tidetown anyway. If we’re in this for the long haul, that’s where most of the food stores are. Plus those warehouses are solid, easily fortifiable, and the roads are clear. It’d be much easier to secure than the market district.”

“And it’s the area you’re most familiar with,” Bain said. “Davenport. Weren’t you in custody?”

Lucretia cut in. “Captain Davenport reported the smuggling of necromantic artifacts to the council today.” She ran her hands over the thread grip of her staff in her lap, jostling it against Davenport’s thigh. “It’s… it’s likely that, that some council interests keeping him in custody are in part responsible for this disaster. And he’s _right_. If nothing else, the docks are as far from the palace as we can get.”

“What we really need is a full-fledged wizard to assess that barrier,” Davenport said. “Captain Bain?”

Bain laughed hollowly. “I wish,” he said. “We can probably get a few novices, a few sorcerers, a few clerics. But it was the palace arcaneums that wrought this mess. I doubt there are any survivors.”

“What about wizards who might not’ve come in to work today?” Lucretia asked. “If there may be surviving councilmembers, then surely…?”

“Like I said, I have men looking,” Bain said. “Do you have the frequencies for any of the Burgermeister’s wizards?”

“Yes,” Lucretia said. She drew a chain out of her collar with a stone of farspeech dangling at the end. “And councilmembers as well. I can start making calls.”

“You do that,” Bain said, shoving himself up from the table. “I’ve got to check in with my lieutenants. Our commander and at least two of the other captains were at the palace. I’m the highest ranking officer going forward, until we find survivors. Lucretia, report your findings directly to me.”

“I’d like to take a force to the docks tomorrow,” Lucretia said, folding her hands on the table. “We need to see what state the stores are in, and secure them against looters.”

Bain paused. “I’ll give you Corporal Killian, Cadet Avi—if you really want him—and a few more. As many as I can spare.”

“Captain Bain,” Davenport said, “we appreciate what you’re doing to fight back the undead. But it’s impossible to take care of everything with just the few guardsmen remaining.  We need to organize survivors if we’re going to prevent any more loss of life.”

“That’s not your call to make,” Bain snapped.

“It _is_ mine,” Lucretia said, rising to her feet. “And he’s right. I’ll see to the survivors, Captain Bain. Have your men cooperate with my orders. Corporal Killian and Captain Davenport can help me recruit a civilian force.”

“…Alright,” Captain Bain said. “But keep your people away from the front lines. My guards will probably need to beat back more looters than zombies. We can’t send civilians into danger, and the last thing we need is friendly fire.”

“I understand,” Lucretia said, leaning across the table to shake Bain’s hand. “We have to restore order as quickly as possible.”

He took her hand in his glove and met her eyes. “Very true,” he said, then pulled away and headed outside.

Killian gave them directions to the garrison’s barracks, but Lucretia opted to stay at the table. Avi brought out ink, paper, and mutton stew. Davenport and Avi sat at Lucretia’s side, eating as she jotted down and struck through names. Her stone of farspeech glowed deep blue and winked out without connecting over and over and over. Davenport chivvied her into taking a few sips of stew, but it grew cold at her elbow.

Davenport was nodding off when a voice crackled from Lucretia’s stone. She nearly fell off the bench in shock. She was at the very bottom of her list, calling names now out of thoroughness rather than hope.

 “ _Hello?_ ” the voice repeated. “ _Lucretia_?”

“Holy shit,” Avi whispered. “Is that one of the _necromancers_?” Davenport held a finger to his lips.

“Master Bluejeans,” Lucretia said haltingly. Davenport glanced over her list and yes, that _was_ what her chickenscratch read. ‘Barry Bluejeans, _Master Necromancer’_.

_“Oh, uh, is this about Cam?”_

Lucretia nearly dropped her stone. “Why would this be about Cam?” Avi mouthed that name with her, looking confused.

 _“I thought you’d sent him to poke around my lab earlier today_ ,” Barry said, muted and flat through the stone. A rush of static swelled and ebbed.

“Was he—was he there when—”

 _“When what, Lucretia?”_ Barry said, piercing through another rush of static.

“Where are you, Barry?” Lucretia asked. “Where were you today?”

 _“I’m headed out for coffee,”_ he said with a nervous laugh. _“I clocked out early this morning. Big day and all. Where are_ you _, Lucretia? You weren’t attending the feast?”_

“Hang up,” Davenport said. “Hang up _now_.”

Lucretia extinguished the stone. “Shit,” she said. They waited. She took a fumbling bite of cold stew. “ _Balls_ ,” she spat and wiped her mouth.

“We have to tell Bain about this,” Davenport said. “He won’t have an easy time with the zombies if there could still be a necromancer out there raising more. Avi, go.”

“Who’s Cam?” Avi asked, rising from his seat.

“The court stenographer, Avi!” Lucretia said. “And I did _not_ send him to the necromancy lab.  But he was—he was looking around for me. Gods, they got him. He’s dead.”

Davenport stretched up to put a hand on her shoulder. She sniffed heavily, then wiped her eyes.

“One more name,” he said gently, pointing to her list. A Maureen, no title written.

Lucretia dialed. The stone went dark. Only then did she let herself fall into sobs.


	4. Built to break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merle helps a new friend get over a bad week.

Bald cypress trees that grew on floodplains commonly sprouted knees: woody spikes encircling their trunks, emerging from roots buried in waterlogged soil. These knees did not commonly grow in the shape of little arrows. Not Pan’s most subtle work, at least not when compared with the scripture Merle Highchurch had grown up with. Pan was supposed to be all about blossoming spring and rollicking wilds. Merle thought a sign from his god should’ve been something like a newborn lamb carrying flowers, or pipe music fluting through windblown boughs.

To be fair to Pan, anything short of setting a swarm of yellowjackets on Highmoon Inn probably would’ve gone over Merle’s head. Even after that fiasco Merle had tried to double back. It’d taken a grouchy bear, rampaging whitetail deer, and several snapping chipmunks to herd Merle into the wooded dale south of Highmoon.

At least Pan didn’t seem to be mad at him. The animals had backed off once he got into the forest proper. This suited Merle just fine—he’d always been a plants man. Preternaturally flamboyant canopies, shapely pinecones, and unseasonal flowers caught his eye the same way a nice pair of legs did for other men. He had no problem following Pan’s signs through the forest once he’d gotten the idea.

But Merle didn’t have to like it. He appreciated what Pan was trying to do, up to a point. Merle’s god had always just been the guy he worked for. Under other circumstances it might’ve been nice to have Pan showing an interest in his personal life. Merle had been raised in the Panite faith by a devout family. He’d done everything they’d said to; attended all the sermons, echoed the doctrines, married the widowed Hekuba Roughridge. Even now he still preached the good word and handed out the ‘Panphlets’ his commune printed.

He’d been handling the Hekuba situation his way. Sure, he’d dropped off the face of the earth for a while. But that was before he started making money. He had cash flow going from adventuring now, and sent most of it on to her! She was a big-city doctor and probably made double what he did, but it was only fair. He’d left her with both the kids.

Merle had his doubts over the past couple days. He almost wished Pan _was_ leading him deep into the forest to begin a life of solitude as a hermit. That was what he’d thought, following a trail of braided catkins away from the road. But on the second the oak trees and loamy soil had given way to marshy thickets of cypress. Once he’d worked out Pan was leading him south it was obvious why.

He’d told Pan that Hekuba wouldn’t want him back. Merle was a poor replacement for Mavis’s real father, an upright dwarf who’d been an industrious stonecutter until the tragic collapse of the Rockseeker quarry. And he’d left little Mookie so long ago that the boy should barely remember him. Then he’d told Pan he was headed back to the road to find a new inn with a jobs board and Pan had dropped a fist-sized walnut on his head.

Day three of hiking started out quiet. Merle ran commentary on the reddening fall foliage around him. He’d gotten through philosophy on the first day and he was trying to keep his complaints to a minimum. This stretch of forest was all sweetgum and Merle didn’t want to find out what Pan could do with a supply of spiked seedpods. He waited to take lunch until he found a clearing where he could give the trees a wide berth.

Merle was halfway through his forage—tart wrinkly wild apples, frilled mushroom caps, and every walnut Pan had used as ammunition—when the bushes ahead of him rustled. The buck that emerged still boasted massive, bony antlers, even this close to winter.  “I gotta eat, Pan!” Merle groaned, hoisting his warhammer. Pan knew he mostly used it as a nut cracker, but Merle wanted something to wave around emphatically. “Sit still for a few minutes, wouldja?”

The buck trotted over to Merle and snuffled at the apple in his hand. Merle didn’t let the apple go fast enough to avoid having a slimy tongue dragged across his fingers. Antlers prodded him in the face before he could even wipe his hand off. Merle jabbed his warhammer into a fork in the antlers and shoved the buck away long enough to gather up his lunch. He clambered to his feet and the buck nosed him forward.

For the first time Pan’s presence didn’t flit away after setting Merle on the right path. The buck fell into step behind Merle. After half an hour of marching Merle’d taken antlers to both shoulders, the center of his back, and square in the ass. If the buck jostled him any harder Merle was going to end up underfoot. His stubby dwarf legs weren’t built for speed.

“Pan dammit, this would go faster if you’d let me take the road!” Merle said, capping off a solid two minutes of grousing at the buck. About a second later the buck shoved him out of the tree line and directly into a wagon.

Merle stroked his beard. “Well, shit.” The wagon straddled the road at an angle. One wheel hung over the ditch on the far side. There was no sign of the horses; their traces had been hacked apart, leaving only scraps of leather and wood. The packed dirt was dark and sticky in patches. Merle followed the buzzing of flies to the other side of the wagon. Four uniformed soldiers lay still in the dirt, deep bloody wedges carved into their heads and shoulders. It looked like they’d barely gotten a chance to draw their swords. A man in filthy silk robes hung impaled against the wagon above them. The wrought-iron lance emerging from his gut was beautifully ornate, intricate curlicues swooping through joined diamonds. Fat turkey vultures with mottled, red heads picked at the corpses silently.

A trail of blood led off the path, through the ditch, and back into the woods. The buck jabbed Merle in the neck.

“Ow, knock it off!” he said. But he took off at a run and the buck let him go.

Merle didn’t need Pan’s help to follow this trail. Dry, brown streaks stood out against oddly verdant grass. He lost track for only a few paces before looking up to see a handprint smeared on bark far above his head. Probably a human, then. More handprints staggered from trunk to trunk but grew no fainter.

The trail left off after fifty paces. Merle stopped to catch his breath and pulled at his tunic’s collar to air out his sweaty chest. He watched the yellowing sweetgum wave in the breeze, looking for oddly shaped seedpods or trails of flowers. An enormous gust kicked up and a shock of crimson leaves burst above the canopy like fireworks. Merle groaned and broke into a jog. At least Pan was upfront about needing him to get to someone in a tearing hurry.

The tree ahead was as outsized as the young man slumped against it. He was prone, nestled in a drift of leaves more vividly red than the blood drying across his beefy chest. One cartoonishly large hand rested over the handle of the axe in his stomach. Blood dribbled from the cut across his eye. The bandana around his neck was barely spotted; the man had made no effort to clean himself up, even though the skirmish on the road had to have been hours ago.

“Hey kid!” Merle called. “What’re you doing out here?”

He cracked an eyelid at Merle’s approach. “Hail and well met, stranger,” the man said, flat and hollow.

Merle crunched his way towards the man and hopped into the leaf pile with him. “So kid,” he said, scooping leaves up into a blanket. “My name’s Merle, nice to meet you—you know anything about those dead guys back on the road?”

“Uh,” the man said. “Uh, I’m Magnus, and. You know that I killed them, right?”

Merle squinted. There was an awful lot of blood on the blade of Magnus’s axe, as well as everywhere else. Merle shifted to stand in the leaf pile and licked him thumb. “Well that makes sense—you’re a mess!” he said, swiping at the blood under Magnus’s eye. Magnus squawked and leaned away. “Hold still, kid.”

“Gross, old man! Don’t use _spit_ —I’ve got a canteen!” Magnus said. He batted Merle’s hand away and let his bloody axe slide off into the leaves.

“Well hurry up with that then! The heck happened to you?”

Magnus fumbled at his belt. “I—I killed a bad guy,” he said. “And the last of his men. It’s over now.” He upended his canteen to rinse one hand and used the remaining trickle of water to scrub roughly at the blood matting his sideburns. Stained water dribbled down towards his collar and he tugged his bandana out of the way. It looked like a plain scrap of fabric, but it must be special to the kid.

Merle opened his rucksack and dug around. He came up with his spare canteen and a fistful of Panphlets. He doused them into a nice, pulpy wad and slapped the mess into Magnus’s hand. “Go on, kid,” Merle said. “Can’t even see your face under all that.”

Magnus scrubbed until the Panphlets disintegrated and left shreds of paper stuck in his beard. The cut ran clean through his eyebrow and down to his cheek, but it didn’t look deep.  He’d probably keep the eye. “Looks like you’re gonna be fine, Maggie.”

“Why do you have a bunch of newspapers?” Magnus asked.

“Well, friend—you look like a man who could use the good word of Pan!”

 

Magnus’s lips curled back from his teeth. Merle decided to interpret that as a smile. “Pan can help you get your life back on track. I mean, killing people in the woods? I’m sure they had it coming, but Pan’s guidance can put you back on a path of righteousness that doesn’t involve so much axe murder.”

Merle handed Magnus a clean Panphlet. Magnus misinterpreted the gesture and used it to dry his face, so Merle gave him a second one. Magnus used it to blow his nose. Merle finally realized that he was tearing up.

“Had a hard day, kid? Did you know those guys?”

Magnus choked. “Did you—do I really look like the kind of guy who kills people for no reason? Do you usually sit down with murderers?”

“Hey kid, God led me to you.”

“God what,” Magnus said. It wasn’t quite a question, but his voice was a little livelier, a little more inflected. Merle groped through the leaves and patted the first thing that felt like a knee. Magnus didn’t flinch, so he must’ve nailed it.

Magnus wadded up the used Panphlet and blew his nose again on the other side. Merle handed him the rest of the stack. Magnus scrubbed at his nose, then at deep filthy cuts across his hands that Merle hadn’t noticed. Magnus let the scraps of paper fall away into the leaf pile.

“What brings you to the woods?” Magnus asked after a while. An obvious deflection. Merle decided to rise to the bait. Maybe some truth between strangers would help the kid open up.

“Well, I’ve been following signs from my god, Pan. He led me to you! He’s got a bug up his ass about something.”

Magnus barked a laugh. “Okay, I can’t tell—you’ve got this, this devoted to god schtick, but then you say stuff like _that_.”

“Eh, Pan and I are tight. We’re buddies! He knows my whole deal. I’ve been his cleric for years, and—”

“You’re a cleric?” Magnus said, openly shocked.

“Yeah, like I was saying!”

“Then can you _heal_ me, maybe?”

“Well sure kid, of course I can! But I was wonderin’ if you even wanted that, what with how you’re sitting here under this tree bleedin’ out. What’d you do to your hands?”

Magnus let Merle take his right hand and turn it over. Three ragged cuts ran at a diagonal across his palm from fingers to wrist. “I—” Magnus said, then broke off and grinned. “I wrestled a bear. It was awesome, actually.”

“Damn, kid,” Merle whistled. “The hell did you do that for?” Merle cast Healing Word. Magnus’s cuts crusted over and shrunk.

“Oh shit, thanks!” Magnus said. He flexed his palms and winced.

“Sorry kid, I’m tapped out on healing now. Pan’s had me trekking through this forest to see my ex-wife. Didn’t plan to wrestle any bears along the way.”

“Your ex-wife?”

“Yeah, ol’ Hekuba. Arranged marriage, you know how it is. To be honest, I was a shitty husband. A total turd! But I’m a new man in Pan.”

“A new man in Pan.” Magnus echoed, sounding lost.

“Yup, been sendin’ her money! But now Pan’s got me visitin’ her in person, and… Well, she’s not gonna be happy about that. I wasn’t good for her. We’re better apart, is the thing, so I don’t know what Pan’s doing. But I trust the guy!”

Magnus didn’t reply. Merle sat back down and watched the leaves rustle. The wind was refreshingly brisk, though they were too far from the sea for it to smell of salt. Merle rooted through his rucksack for the lunch he hadn’t gotten to finish. He shoved the mushrooms into his mouth, then pressed a jar into Magnus’s hands.

“Sap,” Merle said, chewing heavily. “Passed a sugar maple yesterday. Got real wet for me fast, so I saved the leftovers.”

“That is…maybe the creepiest way you could’ve put that?” Magnus said.                                  

“Just drink the sugar, Maggie. Where’s your shit anyway? Don’t you have any supplies?”

“No,” Magnus said. He sniffed at the jar. He brushed a finger across the sticky rim, licked it, and then took a sip. His eyes went wide and he threw back the rest.

Merle gave up on finishing the walnuts. He’d have to go find a rock to pound them open against, and he didn’t feel like leaving the leaf pile yet. He passed Magnus an apple next, and a full canteen.

“Do you know what kind of tree this is?” Magnus asked eventually. Merle followed his gaze to the brilliant crimson canopy above them. The leaves were as large as Magnus’s hand, each with five deeply notched lobes like fingers. The sunlight shining through them flickered as they tossed in the wind. The dappled patches of orange-tinged light and deep shadow brought to mind a flickering campfire.

“Same as the rest,” Merle said, gesturing around them. The other trees were just barely touched with autumn colors, yellow-green and pale orange in counterpoint. “Sweetgum! Pan just wanted to make damn sure I’d notice you sittin’ here.”

“I’ve worked with sweetgum,” Magnus said. “Not often—it doesn’t grow near where I’m from, on the other side of the bay. Used it to panel some cabinets for a friend.”

“Other side of the bay? That’s what, a week’s travel from here?”

“Not really. Day and a half. I caught—I caught a pretty fast boat.” Magnus’s expression soured and turned inwards. Merle waited for only a moment, then shuffled to face the tree.

“Check this out, Maggie,” he said. He ran a finger along the scaly bark and cooed. Magnus scooted away at speed and yelped when he sat on the axe he’d dropped. Merle pretended to not notice his discomfort. Kids these days, so out of touch with nature. He stroked along the bark and it opened for him, widening into a deep cleft. Merle’s fingers came away glistening with yellowed resin.

“Bet you’ve never had liquidambar before,” he said, wiggling his fingers at Magnus. The boy made a face like his soul was leaving his body. “It’s good, tastes like licorice.” Merle popped a finger into his mouth and Magnus openly shuddered.

“That was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen,” Magnus said from a distance of a full meter. Now that he was mostly out of the leaf pile Merle could see the dust caking his trousers, streaked through in rivulets. Magnus’s shirt was torn open along one side and stained brown with old blood. “And I’ve kind of been having a week, here, so I _really_ mean that.”

“What kind of week you been havin’?”

Magnus paused and hunched in on himself. Then, haltingly, he spoke. “You ever—ever heard of Raven’s Roost?”

“That your home, kid?”

“Yeah. Was,” Magnus sucked in a harsh breath. “Got bombed. Two days ago. I was away—Neverwinter, for a stupid craftsmen showcase.”

“And the dead guy’s the one who bombed it,” Merle said.

“Kalen. Mad Governor Kalen—we, my wife—” Magnus choked up. He sobbed harshly and buried his face in his hands. Merle watched his shoulders shake. Then he wiped his fingers clean and shuffled out of the leaf pile to Magnus.

Merle put a hand on Magnus’s shoulder. The kid didn’t flinch away. Merle wondered for a moment whether he should give him a hug—he wasn’t much of a hugger, was the thing—when Magnus surged forward and pressed his face into Merle’s chest. Merle patted the back of his head awkwardly while he sobbed.

“I’m sorry, Magnus,” Merle said. He made a face at the tree over Magnus’s head. What was Pan doing, putting this on his shoulders? Merle was a shitty cleric and a shittier therapist. He’d prattled on about his issues with Hekuba and the whole time Magnus had just lost his wife. He couldn’t even heal the kid up, so what did Pan expect him to do here?

“Julia was—was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Magnus said into Merle’s tunic. His words came out harsh and muffled. “And I had to bury her.  Last year, when Kalen was governor, he was—running the town into the ground. He brought in soldiers, dissolved the council, started throwing people in jail.

“So we—Julia and I, and our friends—led a rebellion. And we won. Most of Kalen’s mercenaries didn’t stick by him when the whole town started fighting back.”

Magnus pulled back, eyes red and watery. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “You know what the shitty thing is?” he said with a bitter laugh.

“What, kid?”

“Kalen ran away back then too. Him and his personal guard. And we didn’t—I didn’t give a shit. We’d won. I was just happy to be with Julia. I could’ve—I didn’t see the point in chasing him down for revenge. I let him go.”

“And then he came back,” Merle said.

“Yeah. He—they took out the support column under the Craftsmen Corridor. My family had a shop there. I found Julia and her dad in the rubble. And—just about everyone else I knew, too.”

Merle frowned. “Jeez, kid. But you got him. Kalen’s gone—what’re you gonna do now?”

Magnus wilted. “I didn’t plan for a _now_. I went in by myself and killed four soldiers with a hand axe. I just wanted to get Kalen.”

“Suicide run, huh?” Merle said, perhaps with more flippancy than was appropriate. “Where’d the bear come in?”

Magnus chuckled. “I expected to get caught on the road. If I survived. But the first thing I saw after two hours was that bear. There wasn’t any other traffic, oddly enough.”

That _was_ unusual. Merle scratched at his beard. That fall years past, when he’d left Hekuba, he’d come northward up these roads and been just about trampled by the rush of caravan traffic headed both ways. He’d heard that commerce had grown since, so; “Where the hell was everybody?”

“Figured it was Istus,” Magnus mumbled.

“Who’s he?”

Magnus squinted at him. “ _She_. Goddess of—time, I guess. Are you _really_ a cleric?”

“I’m _Pan’s_ cleric, Maggie. I don’t keep track of the rest of ‘em. You been talking to gods too, huh?”

“You _talk_ to Pan?”

“Well no, not so much. He’s not a chatty guy. He works with signs! Sent some animals to chase me to you, and he’s been pretty rude with walnuts.”

“Please don’t explain what that means. He—did he send the bear?”

“Might’ve. He’s usually a goats’ man, but no one ‘round here has livestock. You’re lucky he didn’t let it take your head off. Probably didn’t want to piss off Isthmus—what’d she want with you?”

“ _Istus_ , Merle! When I got back to the Roost. She—said I had to chase Kalen, but gave me time to—to bury Julia and Steven.”

“Well, that was decent of her. Magnus, the thing is—a man has to have something to stand for, or else he’ll fall for anything.”

Magnus scooted back and flopped down in the leaf pile. “That’s fine. I don’t feel like standing. Get it?”

“Yeah, good one, buddy!” Merle laughed, stretching out beside him.  “But you can’t live out here in the forest.”

“Guess not,” Magnus said. He let his eyes flicker closed and sighed.

Merle grinned down at him. “I hate to say it, Maggie, but I don’t think Pan’s done with you yet. He didn’t send me to you for nothin’.”

Magnus made a face and rolled away from Merle. “What would he even want me to do for him? I’m—” Magnus broke off and spat out a leaf. He sat up with his tongue hanging out and scraped his fingers across it.

“What’ve you got there?” Merle asked, leaning in. Magnus raised his fingertips to his eyes and smiled.

“Merle, look at this!” Magnus said. “It was in my mouth. It’s like, an adorable fuzzy ant!”

The ant was almost two entire centimeters but looked tiny sitting atop Magnus’s sausage fingers. It crawled down towards his palm and he turned his wrist with it. It was blanketed in beautiful velvet bands of alternating orange and black stripes. Its antennae tickled at one of Magnus’s cuts. He raised his other hand and ran a gentle finger down its back.

Merle backed away in a hurry. “Yup, that’s a velvet ant, kid. ‘Cept they’re wasps, actually.”

“Wasps?” Magnus asked, finger frozen above the ant’s back. It started trekking towards his sleeve.

“Yeah—they’re usually called cow-killers, on account of that’s how much their stings hurt.”

Magnus yelped and shook his hand off before Merle finished his sentence. The cow-killer fell off into the leaf pile and Magnus jumped to his feet. He scraped his axe towards him with the toe of one boot and picked it up with two fingers. “Could you have led with that, maybe?!”

They crunched out of the leaves and stood to face each other under the trees. Merle crossed his arms, annoyed to have to crane his head up so much. “As I was sayin’—you oughta come with me to see my ex-wife, I guess. If Pan changes his mind he’ll let us know.”

“You don’t have to do that, Merle,” Magnus said. He turned his axe over and examined it. Satisfied that it was wasp-free, he wiped it roughly on the knee of his pants and holstered it at his waist.

“Yeah, I wish I didn’t have to talk to my ex! But really kid, I’m not gonna leave you and your death wish out alone in the forest. Do you even know how to forage?”

Magnus avoided Merle’s gaze. “…No.”

“That’s what I thought. Kids these days! You should at least stick with me till we get to the big city. You can talk to a cleric there, get seen by a doctor.”

“I don’t need any of that, Merle,” Magnus said, visibly sulking. “There’s nothing I’d do in a city.”

“You said you made cabinets! That’s a skill. If an old fart like me can get by then you’ll find work for sure.”

Magnus swallowed thickly. “Merle, I—I see what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. But I don’t want—I don’t have anything to live for, without Julia.”

Merle reached out and slapped his knee. “You gonna leave an old holy man alone in the forest, kid? What am I supposed to do if the next axe murderer ain’t as nice as you?”

“Maybe don’t talk to axe murderers, Merle!” Magnus said, throwing up his hands.

“Working out great for me so far!” Merle said. “C’mon now, get moving. We don’t wanna keep Pan waiting!” Merle picked a random direction and trotted off into the trees. Pan’d correct his heading before too long.

“Hang on a minute—” Magnus said. Merle turned back. He was standing with his tongue between his tips, wiggling his fingertips. Nothing happened. “Aw, shit,” he said, “I guess it doesn’t work like that.”

“What doesn’t?” Merle said.

“The lance thing I killed Kalen with. I left it back on the road.”

“You mean you left it in that Kalen guy’s stomach.”

“…Yeah. Sorry you had to see that.”

Merle laughed. “Hey, it’s no skin off my nose! I didn’t even know the guy, and I’d say he deserved it! You okay to go back for it?”

Magnus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said, seemingly composed. “Yeah, we can raid their wagon for supplies too. And wouldn’t it be faster to take the road?”

“If Pan lets us!” Merle said, swatting the back of Magnus’s knee. “Take it from me—if you see any geese, just run.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Magnus said. “But if we come across any guards, I’m turning myself in.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, kid,” Merle said, confident that Pan would interfere if it came down to that. Plus they were still at least a week out from the city. They wouldn’t have been likely to encounter guards even if the road hadn’t been deserted. Magnus fell into step behind him, retracing their path through the forest.

“Which city are we going to, anyway? Your ex isn’t in Neverwinter?”

“Aw, heck no, kid! That’s a trip I couldn’t make alone, especially not this late in the year! Nah, she’s probably still at our old house, in—shit.”

“Did you forget the name?” Magnus said incredulously, stooping low to follow Merle under hanging branches.

“Hang on, it’ll come to me,” Merle said. They were almost in sight of the wagon already. “Something-gate. Water? No. Wind? Maybe it wasn’t a double-you. Goldgate? Goldwaters?”

“Do you mean _Westgate_?” Magnus laughed.

“Yeah, that was it!” Merle said. “Westgate. Bit of a hellhole, t’be honest.”


	5. Blackout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's see how Barry's been doing.
> 
> drinking game:  
> take a shot whenever Barry is inadvertently sketchy  
> take a shot whenever Luce makes a bad judgment call re: trust

The Miller Mansion ignited like a beacon five days after the barrier descended. Barry was two streets over in a picked-through bakery, searching for whatever looters hadn’t cared to take. He looked up from a basket of stale bread to see orange light glinting on the frosted windows and hit the floor behind the counter several beats too late. If there had been an explosion he would’ve been peppered by flying glass. But, peeking out the door, Barry realized that the light shone gentle and steady.

Barry felt like the memory of the palace’s destruction still reverberated in his bones. He hadn’t even been awake for it. He’d pulled an all-nighter and then let his coworkers bully him out of the lab so he could rest before the feast. Hours later he’d blearily trudged to his favorite café for a mid-afternoon coffee before the gears caught in his brain and he realized the fog overhead wasn’t just bad weather.

Then his stone of farspeech had rung and he’d gotten to talk to Lucretia for barely a second before she hung up on him. By then he knew that something was very wrong. The bustle of people on the street was frantic beyond the typical rush, throngs fleeing north from the palace. People shouted about attacks and zombies, and when Barry had pushed against the crowd he’d gotten a glimpse of a twisted black keep squatting over a field of rubble.

His life’s work was somewhere in that rubble. His notes, his equipment, his coworkers—the closest thing he’d had to friends. The twins had been some of the best people he’d known, stunning and stunningly brilliant. Barry had said he’d see them that evening and then napped through their deaths.

He didn’t know how Lucretia had gotten out. Whenever he called her she was eager to pump him for information but wouldn’t divulge anything except the names of those confirmed dead. Barry knew how it looked, with him being a necromancer in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. It was still sheer idiocy to think that any lab accident could be potent enough to bring down the palace and trap the city. None of the arcaneums should have been equipped for a ritual on the scale required for effects this extreme. The only thing out of the ordinary in the last moments he’d spent at the lab had been Cam’s visit, and when Barry’d left the twins were obligingly giving him a full tour.

If the palace hadn’t been ground zero then Barry would have sworn they couldn’t have done anything to cause this. He prayed he hadn’t done anything to cause this. He had no way to check, though, short of digging through several tons of rubble.

He left the bread in the bakery for later. Starvation was more of a threat to him than the undead, but he was the sole living thing left in his neighborhood. It’d been two days since he’d last helped a family of survivors reach Lucretia’s people. Barry had chosen not to follow them. Lucretia was happy to take notes on anything Barry would give her, but he was obviously under suspicion. He hoped her distrust didn’t extend to refusing to use his instructions on simple, useful spells like _Spare the Dying_ and _Gentle Repose_. Too few people understood that necromancy wasn’t just about manipulating the dead; Barry’s specialty was theory on the behavior and interactions of _living_ souls. Besides, necromancy or not, any tactics to save the dying and put the dead to rest were indispensable. Zombies only presented a threat in numbers.

The air outside was still choked with dust from the palace’s explosion, turning opaque under lantern light and making his nose run. Zombies were already gathering at the wrought iron fence of the Miller Mansion. It would make for a poor safehouse. The brownstone villa sat almost in the heart of downtown, abutted neighboring buildings on two sides, and was close enough to the curb that Barry could see into its windows through gaps in the shrubbery. Anyone looking out from the house would have a clear view of maybe a meter of browning grass before bushes obstructed their line-of-sight. Those bushes would do little to slow down the zombies twisting themselves through the fence pickets.

The Miller Mansion was one of the few buildings in Westgate wired for electricity. The family had made the paper for it years back. Someone must have gone in there and turned all the lights on. Even Barry knew that was a bad plan, and he was walking up to a crowd of zombies with his hands in his jeans pockets.

A stealthier man could’ve avoided the crowd entirely. Barry had two left feet and two decades of studying necromancy, so he played to his strengths. After years of negotiating with grave robbers and the medical school for cadavers it was surreal to have such ample supply. Barry turned a critical eye to the nine zombies between him and the mansion’s fence. Two intact enough to pass for living with a little work, four in finery caked with chalky dust, another two with missing limbs, and one with a snapped neck wobbling freely. Barry wondered if he could recognize any of them and decided to not try.

The zombies were disposable to whoever was animating them. They were indiscriminate in their efforts; Barry had encountered more corpses raised from children or maimed victims than from whole, adult bodies, and not one of them under orders. The zombies turned and shambled towards him. He watched their gaits and assessed. Raising dozens of undead was beyond the abilities of a normal human, so he’d have to settle for four. The ones who’d closed the gap to him fastest looked to be in the best shape.

A flick of his wand, a pulse of magic, and half the crowd belonged to him. He set them against their fellows. They snarled at his back as he let himself in through the gate. He latched it closed behind him with snapping teeth straining towards his fingers, trapped in a headlock by one of his. Flesh tore as he slipped through the unlocked front door—an ear from one of the ferals. Now he had five zombies under his control, one for each day since the end. His earliest zombie watched the streets for him, plodding at the edge of his range. He turned his senses towards his four new ones and directed them to gang up on and shred each of the ferals in turn.

Controlling so many zombies at once was a little overwhelming. Barry slid out of the connections and blinked fuzz from his vision. The Millers’s foyer was oddly sterile, all understated woodwork with few adornments. The centerpiece was a many-armed electric chandelier of incandescent globes. The paper had had something flattering to say about its artistry, but to Barry it looked like an octopus carrying oranges. The most attractive thing about the mansion was the hot air pumping up from the floor vents. He started sweating almost immediately and shoved his stiff, cold fingers into his armpits to warm them up.

Someone with a nasally voice was babbling a few rooms over. They didn’t sound panicked at being trapped in a house surrounded by zombies. Barry strained his ears to listen. Then he remembered that he was technically breaking and entering and tip-toed to the carpeted stairs ahead. He was halfway to the second floor when _Lucretia’s_ voice cut into the rambling. Barry sprinted up the remaining stairs and crouched down behind the balustrade, dousing his lantern.

Four people entered the lobby below him. Lucretia didn’t look anything like the timid secretary who’d made the Burgermeister sign off on Barry’s funding requests. She carried a heavy oak staff and stood tall, dark neck a graceful curve below close-cropped hair. Her sweeping blue robes ruffled against her booted ankles as she moved to stand on one of the heating vents. A massive orc woman in a blue doublet vest followed close behind her. Their tour guide was a human man in a ratty lab coat and thick glasses. He was probably Lucretia’s age, but his stooped shoulders and hand-wringing made him look so much younger than her. Barry thought he recognized the kid as Lucas, the Miller heir and prodigy whose reputation as a brilliant scientist had merit to it behind his family’s wealth. The boy gave every impression he was nervous to be there, skulking behind a tall, mustachioed elf dressed like a butler.

The boy cleared his throat and pointed at the vent beneath Lucretia’s feet.  “So, with cogeneration, the heated steam isn’t wasted—it’s diverted to these vents after passing the turbines. We could use the heat to warm greenhouses, get some crops going under incandescent light.”

Lucretia hummed flatly. “And each engine can provide enough power for hundreds of bulbs?” she said, raising her head to consider the chandelier. Barry pressed himself flat against the floor.

“Yeah, my house has over four hundred lights!” Lucas said. “And we could get thousands going—each Miller engine provides more than 175 horsepower. And, with our _revolutionary_ tungsten filaments, the average bulb lasts for thousands of hours.”

“It’s been cooling off outside by the day,” Lucretia said. “How long until we run out of coal to burn for your engines?”

“If you excuse me,” the elf said, raising his voice, “as your wizardry specialist, I advise using arcane energy to make up for any deficits in fueling.” Wizardry specialist? Who was this guy? Barry should know every wizard working in the city and he’d _never_ seen this elf before. He would’ve remembered that garish bow-tie—and people made fun of him for his jeans! At least jeans were practical and sturdy.

“Yeah, you really just need to heat the water!” Lucas said. “Any old fuel will do, even natural gas!”

“Or, boys,” the orc said, audibly drumming fingers against her thigh, “we could burn the gas for _fire_.”

Lucas wilted, but the wizard pressed on. “Ah, but without the Millers’s revolutionary conduit system, how would you ensure an _equitable_ distribution of the heat?”

“Killian’s right, Jenkins,” Lucretia said, tone clipped. “Our most immediate concern is preserving the lives of the remaining survivors. We’ve secured enough tons of grain to have food for a while yet. We can’t let people freeze to save fuel, _equitable_ or not.”

“I’m afraid we might not have a choice,” Jenkins said. “By my calculations, the barrier won’t weaken until we pass the second equinoctial point and the eighth house is ascendant once more. We’re in the tenth house now, so, as you can imagine, this will take quite some time.”

That was a load of hot garbage. Houses and equinoxes sounded like astrology to Barry, divination at best. Neither of those were Barry’s wheelhouse and it didn’t matter. The forces at play here were _obviously_ necromantic. He peeked between the rails of the balustrade. Lucretia wasn’t making a face like she believed Jenkins—her expression was utterly flat, save for one arched eyebrow. Barry hoped she’d understood from him that she should be looking at the release of vital energy at death as a potential power source for the barrier. Keeping people alive was the main goal here, and if it weakened the barrier then so much the better.

“Will Captain Davenport be joining us?” Jenkins asked. “As a fellow Illusionist, he might have a more appropriate background to make some of these vital decisions.”

“He will not,” Lucretia said. “Lucas, show me these engines. We should get out of here pronto.”

“The captain didn’t want to come?” Lucas asked, heading towards the back of the house.

Lucretia trailed Lucas out of the room before she spoke. “We can’t afford to have all of our leadership in once place.” Jenkins rolled his eyes behind her. Their voices grew distant as they headed towards the back of the house.

Barry flopped over on the carpet and scrubbed his face. The second he wasn’t apparently stalking Lucretia he was going to march straight up to her and expose Jenkins for the fraud he was. He was clearly some toady of Lucas’s—who should be smarter than this, even without a background in magic! Barry closed his eyes and reached out for his zombies. There were three left defending the gates now, tattered and failing. He’d felt the other connection wither and snap while Lucas wheedled on.  He called for his scout to throw itself into the fray.  The sensory feedback from them wasn’t great, but there was definitely a horde amassing outside. Also he could see figures dragging claws across the windows by the front door with his own eyes, standing up.

Barry crept down the stairs. Lucas had led everyone into parlor, so he headed towards the private areas of the house. Sure enough, the Millers had a narrow servant’s staircase tucked between the butler’s pantry and the kitchen. Barry headed down into the darkness, not bothering to relight his lantern. He told himself he wasn’t _sneaking_ —he was just staying informed while he figured out how to talk to Lucretia without scaring her. He couldn’t take off without knowing her crew was safe.

The basement was hot and noisy. The Miller engines occupied most of the room—dynamos with massive whirring turbines, flanking a roaring boiler. The far side of the room had a public staircase and a viewing area roped off with velvet stanchions like a posh theater. Barry stretched out his cramped toes and let himself walk naturally, relieved that the engines would mask his footfalls. He could see the top of Killian’s head on the far side of a dynamo. Between Lucas shouting to be heard and the bulky engines he should be unnoticeable. He shuffled along the walls and examined the room.

Now, you don’t get “revolutionary” engines without a lab, and Lucas didn’t _sound_ like someone who lost all his toys when the palace fell. Lucas also couldn’t count on Lucretia’s patronage for long if he couldn’t deliver. Was he trying to get paid an advance when the world might as well be ending, or was this his best attempt at being helpful? Besides, Barry would’ve known if the Millers kept their workspace at the palace—gods knew their heating system would’ve been appreciated.

There was a curtained-off closet tucked into the wall, invisible from the view area. Barry let himself in, pulling down hard on the rings so they wouldn’t slide. He cupped his hand around a conjured flame and looked over the closet. By all appearances there was nothing inside except an empty rack of shelves. Barry was instantly suspicious—no scientist would waste storage space. He leaned into the shelves and felt around. They were deep, clean-swept, and dragged his whole body when they swung back with the false wall.

Barry crawled backwards out of the shelves, closed the concealed door on his ribs, and pushed his way through with a curse. The hidden room was more than twice the size of the dynamo chamber. Every surface was strewn with discarded tools and paper. Two of the counters were covered in coils of copper wire and bits of iron; a third was buried under sheets of colored glass and crystal. A bulb glowed yellow over a writing desk, but most of the light in the room came from the green, glowing liquid filling a large glass tube against the far wall.

Barry’d had enchanted tubes exactly like that in his own lab. He used them to preserve cadavers and regrow tissue. All of the Millers’s projects were engineering—they had no business dabbling in necromancy. There was a _silhouette_ in the tube. Barry frowned and headed straight for the journals on the writing desk. He rifled through them. The top ones were notes on the dynamos—he read a line about induction before his eyes glazed over—but the third had an unmistakably arcanic diagram of a circle surrounded in runes that caught his eye immediately.

He flipped a page and a scaly arm reached up to snake around his neck. Barry yelped and dropped the journals. “Don’t move,” a woman’s voice hissed in his ear. He twisted around and glimpsed the slitted pupils of a dragonborn. Then she pressed a dagger to his throat and forced his head forward. She yanked his wand out of his pocket and threw it across the room.

“Lucretia!” the dragonborn shouted. Barry’s ears were still ringing when the wall swung open and Lucas barreled in with Lucretia on his heels. Her eyes widened at the scene.

“Uh, hi,” Barry said, throat bobbing. His skin slowly parted around the dagger’s tip.

“ _Barry_ ,” Lucretia said, brandishing her staff at the glowing tube. “Lucas! What _is_ this.”

“Oh gods,” Lucas said. He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “I didn’t know how to tell you. Mom’s—really hurt.”

Lucretia’s head swiveled. She hefted her staff and sprinted to the tube. Distantly, Barry felt another of his zombies fall. He couldn’t focus on their senses without a wand. He was barely aware of the souls around him. It was like having thick cotton over his entire brain; the mansion could be overrun before he knew.

“Maureen,” Lucretia whispered, palm pressed flat against the glass. “What happened?”

“We don’t know,” Jenkins said. He squeezed Lucas’s shoulder. “She returned from the palace only to collapse on the porch. Servants carried her in.”

Lucas sniffled and leaned back against Jenkins. “I got there as soon as I could—but she’s not waking up. The healers worked on her before they evacuated.”

“Where,” Barry said, ignoring the trickle of blood running through his stubble, “did you guys get a regeneration tube? This is some—some serious stuff.”

“Don’t answer that, Lucas,” Jenkins said. “This necromancer could very well be responsible for Maureen’s condition!”

“Hey—let’s not—let’s not sling accusations around, okay?” Barry said. “I’m real sorry about your mom, Lucas, but I had nothing to do with it. I could…take a look?”

“She’s not dead!” Lucas said. “She’s safe in there, the tube’s healing her!”

“You’ve done enough already, necromancer!” Jenkins said. “What did you hope to achieve, breaking into the Millers’s lab like this? Was Maureen your target all along?”

Barry did not have a good rebuttal to that. “I was—I was investigating!” he said, fully aware how suspicious that sounded. “Look, you guys—you lit up this whole place like Candlenights. And it’s gonna be a real sticky situation here soon if we don’t get gone.”

Still staring into the tube, Lucretia said, “Lucas. Go kill the lights.” She pulled a chain out of her robes and murmured briefly into her stone of farspeech. She turned around to see Lucas standing with Jenkins. “ _Hurry_. They’re inside the house.”

Lucas balked. “What about Mom?” Lucretia shut her eyes and drew in a ragged breath.

“Don’t fret, she’ll be quite alright in there,” Jenkins said. “The zombies should have no way to sense her through the tube, and your secret door is so clever they’d never get in anyway.” Barry tactfully declined to contradict this, even though he felt like any zombie could match the graceless fumbling that _he’d_ gained access with.

“Hurry, Lucas,” Lucretia snapped. He turned and bolted.

“Barry’s wand’s on the floor over there,” the dragonborn said.

Lucretia followed her pointing finger and strode to retrieve it. “Thank you, Carey.”

Another of Barry’s zombies vanished from his awareness. He only had two left. “Can I uh—you know what, you have no reason to trust me, okay. But I was looking at—can I just pick up the journals?”

“Those are the Millers’s intellectual property!” Jenkins hissed. But Lucretia nodded and Carey released her hold on Barry to let him stoop down and pick them up.

“Look, here,” Barry said, squinting to read in the dim light. “There’s some—arcana thing, see?”

“Please,” Jenkins said, peering over Barry’s shoulder, “tell me how this is relevant to our current situation vis-à-vis _zombies_. Don’t you recognize pure theory when you see it? Maureen was a brilliant woman; only a fraction of her ideas were realized.”

“This kind of looks like it has something to do with divination,” Barry said, skimming over the pages. There were dozens of diagrams of different circles, radii and tangents marked in neat cursive. There was a table of crystal structures listed alongside impurities found in different kinds of glass. He cast a sideways look at the sheets of glass and crystal on the counter. Didn’t look like pure theory to him. Jenkins huffed an unpleasantly moist puff of air against Barry’s neck.

Barry paused. One of the later pages was a simplified table of the crystal structures from earlier. But, instead of a column for glass, it had headings that read _Transitive_ , _Elemental_ , _Outer_ , and _Inner_.  “Or maybe planar studies.”

“Planar studies?” Lucretia asked, striding over.

“Yeah—look, you can’t get castles out of nowhere. You either have transmutation on an, an incomprehensibly grand scale, or you move it from somewhere else.”

A resounding click sounded from the next room and the whirring dynamos quieted incrementally. The desk lamp went out, leaving the glow of magic energy in the tube as their only light source. Carey and Jenkins’s eyes reflected green in the darkness.

Jenkins opened his mouth and Barry talked over him. “Guys, before we go—if Maureen dabbled in any planar theory at all, this might be the only place left in the city we could get reference materials. We need to take a look around.”

“We need to leave!” Lucas said from the closet, shining a lantern in. “The engines and all the lights are off!”

Lucretia threw Barry’s wand at him and swept everything off the desk into her arms. She balanced the stacks of paper on one hip, her staff on the other, and jogged for the door. “Take the journal, we’re out of here.”

Jenkins tugged the journal out of Barry’s slack hands. “Let _me_ look this over. I worked closely with Maureen on all of her planar studies. Isn’t that right, Lucas?”

“Uh yeah of course, let’s _go_ ,” Lucas said, already pulling the curtain to the closet aside.

Barry tripped over his feet stumbling after them past the dynamo and up the public stairs. With wand in hand he could finally take stock of the situation. He couldn’t get a read on Maureen through the arcane energy in the tube, but it didn’t look good for her. By all accounts regeneration tubes did a fantastic job preserving living tissue and were a _viscerally_ unpleasant experience. The kind of coma that could keep her from flailing her way out was the kind of coma people didn’t wake up from.

Carey yanked on his wrist before he could feel out how many zombies were in the house. “Hey, spacecase! Move your feet!” she said. Something shattered above them.

They emerged into the formal parlor to find Killian shoving a china cabinet against rattling doors. Lucas winced at the trail of smashed plates. “Hey guys,” Killian said, bracing the cabinet with her muscled shoulders. Carey hopped up to brush a kiss against one of her biceps. “So, I don’t know if y’all’ve noticed, but we are _well fucked_.”

“This is fine,” Lucretia said. “We’re fine.” She brought up the butt of her staff and smashed a window. A few shards fell away, leaving the frame ringed with jagged shards like teeth. “Um.”

Barry summoned a mage hand and punched the shards out of the frame. Carey vaulted through the window a second later, landing in a crouch on the ground outside. “Clear, maybe!” she called. Then a zombie burst out of the bushes. Carey sunk a dagger through its eye before Barry could get his wand up.

Lucretia tossed her armful of notes out the window and followed after them. Barry hit the ground with a painful thud and scrambled out of Jenkins’s way. His last zombies had disappeared somewhere between the basement and the parlor.

Killian barreled through the window last, cabinet toppling behind her with a deafening crash. Barry and Lucas knelt to help Lucretia gather up the notes. Killian seized a charging zombie by the scruff and chucked it over the fence.

She had to chuck Barry over the fence, too, after even Lucretia managed to clamber over and unsnag her flowing robes from the finials. Carey moved like a blur, dispatching two more zombies with slashes across their heels and daggers wedged into their eyes. Lucretia clobbered another with her staff. There were few zombies left on the street after that. The bulk of the horde would take a while to find their way back out of the mansion. Killian had an easy time picking off stragglers with her crossbow, and Jenkins had yet to cast a spell. Some ‘wizardry expert’.

“We can come back for Maureen,” Lucretia said, after they’d put some distance between themselves and the mansion. “The zombies will wander off in a matter of hours.”

“Y-yeah,” Lucas said. “Thanks, Lucretia. You know, my mom—she always thought the world of you.”

“And I of her.”

“Hey, I need to ask—can you please not tell Davenport about this, immediately?” Lucas said, words coming in a nervous rush. He hugged the notes to his chest. “I don’t want him to—he wouldn’t like how risky it is, going back for Maureen.”

Lucretia’s staff clattered on the pavement. “Here’s kind of a secret, Lucas—I know he wouldn’t like it. I didn’t tell him we were going to look at your engines in the first place.”

“Is that why you were out here with—with almost no backup?!” Barry said. He’d been trying to trail along at the back of the group. Killian had noticed, though, and she was sticking close to his shoulder. He gripped his wand nervously.

Killian stared down at him. “Hey, let’s talk about how you were out here _alone_. We handled the zombies just fine, what was _your_ plan?”

Barry’s plan had been to thrall as many zombies as he needed. The five he’d used up today had probably saved all their lives.  But there was no diplomatic way to explain that he’d made cannon fodder of people’s corpses. The less he flaunted necromancy in front of Lucretia the better.

“ _I_ ,” Jenkins said, raising his voice, “have concerns about taking this man back to the safe zone. We don’t know anything about his motives.”

“I’m just trying to survive out here, like everyone else!”

“Why _here_ , though?” Carey said. “This neighborhood was cleared. Why didn’t you evacuate?”

Killian reached down and tugged Barry’s wand from his hand with two fingers. “Hey!” he protested.

“Barry, I’m sorry,” Lucretia said. “Jenkins has a point. I can’t extend my trust blindly, not when so many people are depending on me.”

“Look, I get that you have a thing against necromancy—” Barry said, wincing even as the words left his mouth. Gods, he was going to screw this up. “And you know what, that’s, that’s definitely justified, considering our current circumstances. But I can help, Lucretia. I’m not—” he waved a hand at the abandoned houses around them, at the rolling fog overhead. “I’m not part of all _this_ , whatever it is.”

“We can’t take that chance,” Killian said. “You have a bad habit of popping up where you’re not expected, Bluejeans.”

“Here’s the deal,” Lucretia said, drawing the group to a stop. Killian fired a bolt into a distant zombie. “The engines aren’t off the table. We might need them later. Lucas, do you need your lab supplies to make more?”

“No, no, any machinist shop should be enough—I just need copper, and iron, and do we have a transmutation specialist?”

Lucretia shook her head. “Gods, I wish. That would be baller.”                   

“Okay, that’s still fine. I can make due. There’s a couple things that’d be good to grab when we go back for Mom, but I don’t need them to get started.”

“Jenkins,” Lucretia said.  “Can you make sense of Maureen’s notes?”

“Come on, Lucretia!” Barry said. “That’s some—something I’d be able to—” Killian clamped a hand down over his shoulder.

“It’s _Madame Director_ , Barry,” Lucretia snapped. “I’m responsible for our entire operation, evacuating thousands of survivors! I have to put their safety above _everything_. Jenkins is a trusted friend of the Miller family and Maureen’s assistant. We found _you_ sneaking through her lab, and you still haven’t explained why!”

 “Look, I don’t—I don’t really have a _good_ explanation. But what’re you going to tell Davenport, Luc—Director?” Barry said.

“I’m certainly not going to tell him that we went on an unsanctioned excursion and _invited a necromancer back_.”

“What _are_ we going to tell the Captain?” Carey said.

“If I may interject,” Jenkins said, “right now we don’t have much _to_ tell him. I’d hate to alarm him unduly over necromancy when that might compromise Maureen’s eventual recovery. Constructing new engines will take weeks. Nothing may come of the notes in the end. I’d _remember_ if they had anything pertaining to our current situation.”

“Alright, that’s it then,” Lucretia said. She broke away from the group and led them forward once more. “We’ll keep him apprised as the situation develops. For now, though—Killian, take Barry to Captain Bain. He can stay in custody there.”

“Lucretia, please,” Barry said. Killian’s grip brought him to a standstill. “I really think the notes are important. The mirrors they’re describing—they’re like scaled-up plane anchors.”

“Rubbish,” Jenkins said, looking back at Barry over his shoulder. “They were a fanciful application of a divination technique that bore no fruit. And, if they _were_ important, we’d have no reason to entrust them to you! I’ve got this well in hand, Madame Director.”

Killian kept Barry rooted to the spot until the rest of the group disappeared down the street. They took the lantern with them. Barry couldn’t see anything except the occasional crackle of energy streaking through the miasma overhead and reflecting off Killian’s eyes. She still had his wand. He had no choice but to let her lead him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barold and Luce should've listened to the podcast so they'd know who the antagonists are


	6. Bitter blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's check in on Kravitz and Taako, days in the future.

Kravitz saw the zombie smashed at the foot of the staircase and gave himself a moment to slump to the floor, exhausted. All he wanted to do was crawl upstairs and relax. He was fraying at the edges.  Today had been vexing to an extreme. He hated feeling insubstantial; he was so worn-through that it took serious effort for him to turn his senses outward. He was shrunken and creased, and couldn’t easily manage more than a feather-light touch.

He should be fearsome! He was a monster of shadows and magic, virtually invulnerable! But that loon with the axe and the fat dwarf clearly hadn’t gotten the memo. He refused to admit to himself that having the solidity beaten out of him probably saved his hide. He’d fled away into darkness and stuck to shadows the whole way home.

But now he had to go back out. He had to drag himself back across the bridge, back through the rubble of busted-open houses, and find a relatively clean well to steal water from. Chores like this were what zombies were supposed to be for!

He filled a bucket to the brim with fresh water, feeling around the edges of its handle until he figured out how to grip it. Then he slid down the well and dunked himself while he was at it. He shook off the charred splinters and ash he’d dragged away from the fight. It was an instant relief to at least not have all _that_ grating against him. No way was he going to bathe in the keep’s disgusting moat. Kravitz loathed the detour, but he did have two good reasons for it.

The second good reason confronted him when he finally managed to carry the full bucket all the way back to the keep and up an _egregious_ number of steps. It was a small mercy that none of his family saw him, pathetic as he was. He was at the threshold of his room before he remembered that he could’ve gotten a zombie or skeleton to haul the bucket for him. So he was in a foul mood when he rounded the twisting corners that separated this little sanctuary from the rest of the keep only to find Taako crumpled on the floor, hair completely covering his face.

Kravitz gave himself a moment to put off dealing with all _that_. He turned a critical eye to Taako’s sculpture in the corner, the only sign he’d moved around the room in two days. The skeleton servant he’d been gifted was _inventively_ reassembled. It looked like Taako’d torn its jaw off and then used that to pry out half its ribs. The spine was intact, albeit upside-down, and he’d shoved each of its phalanges into the upturned bowl of its skull.

Skeletons were pretty sturdy. The thing turned one socket to track Kravitz’s movement, pinky wriggling inside like a worm. Kravitz supposed it had dragged itself back to Taako after he’d ordered it to jump off the top landing with the zombie. Kravitz wasn’t about let the undead to defend themselves; that would be inviting disaster. It had been difficult enough to impress upon most of the horde that they were to block the stairs _without_ hurting Taako, let alone priming two to take simple orders. Taako had no appreciation for the hard work he’d ruined. Kravitz’s father would notice if Taako destroyed too many more of the undead, so Kravitz mentally consigned himself to babysitting.

Taako hadn’t reacted to him coming in. Probably unconscious, with how he was pressed up against the floor like that. The keep was constructed from necromantic energy. The stone wasn’t _really_ stone, and it would sap the strength of any living creature over time. It was beyond belief that Taako had just lain there and let it happen. Kravitz’s hope of getting intelligent conversation out of Taako was waning, but he still compared favorably to the undead.

Kravitz swept under Taako and levered his shoulders up. Taako’s eyelids twitched but he stayed limp. So Kravitz brought the bucket of water to his lips—a little more forcefully than necessary, but he wasn’t in top form, here—and tipped the whole thing forward.

Taako choked on the first mouthful and spluttered to full awareness. Kravitz let him flail, but all Taako accomplished was smacking his heels against the floor. The water sloshed down his front and ran pink from his shirt.

“What the hell have you been doing up here?” Kravitz said when the bucket was half-empty. He hoped _some_ of the water had gone to Taako’s stomach. The elf rolled over on hands and knees to hack up a lung. Kravitz waited, belatedly remembering to slide between Taako’s bare hands and the floor when he started listing. He messed up on either the solidity needed to insulate Taako or the thinness to avoid unbalancing him, though, because Taako pitched over onto his side.

Two days on the floor without food or water or even true rest. Taako’s magic was barely perceptible; a faded touch of warmth, like a recently-extinguished candle. Small mercies, Kravitz supposed. Any more might have gotten them both in trouble. Taako could have managed a weak spell, maybe cantrips, but it took only a moment for Kravitz to siphon that energy away. It was like a mouthful of tepid brandy on a cold night. Just enough enticing warmth to feel a dribble of pleasure, not enough to sustain or satiate.

“What—the fuck—” Taako gasped. Having your magic drained so abruptly couldn’t be pleasant. Kravitz had definitely overdone it. But it was a nice boost for _him_. The room sharpened; glossy, smooth floor and walls, chipped around Taako’s skeletal sculpture. Dust lingering in the air around the empty window set high in the wall. Taako’s hands felt a little chilled, so he must be freezing. Should’ve lit a fire while he still could!

“Are we on speaking terms, Taako? We better be, because _boy_ do I have a few things to say to you,” Kravitz said. Taako grimaced at him. Kravitz pulled him up to sitting—his clothes should be thick enough to keep him safe, if he’d just avoid smushing his face into necromantic constructs. He didn’t have much more vitality left to lose.

Taako leveled a bloodshot glare at him. Kravitz waited politely for him to speak.  Then Kravitz got impatient and drew enough solidity together to shake Taako’s shoulders.

Taako’s voice was froggy with disuse, catching thickly in his throat. “Didn’t fucking recognize you, m’dude. Weren’t you bigger?”

Kravitz passed the bucket back to Taako. Taako’s gaze sharpened and he watched the path of the bucket with interest, eyes tracing the edges of the shadows that were Kravitz against the rest of the dark, empty room. “We’re not talking about that, we’re talking about why you decided to tell your zombie to take a leap of faith instead of something useful, like bringing you food! I’m _not_ giving you a new one.”

Taako took a gulp of water and slammed the bucket down onto Kravitz. But he was thin against the floor there. He didn’t have to feel the blow. “You don’t listen to a word I say, do you?” Kravitz said.

“Of course I listen to you. I just don’t fuckin’ care,” Taako said. He pressed on the bucket and grated it along the floor. _That_ pinched, so Kravitz tugged it out of Taako’s grip and set it down a short distance away.

“You listen to me, huh? What’s my name, then?”

Venom flashed across Taako’s face. “Krakatoa. Karl. You can fuck off either way.”

“It’s Kravitz. I remembered _your_ name.”

“Do you remember my _dead sister’s_ name?”

Kravitz remembered roaring flames and dry heat so intense his not-flesh curdled. He had a nonsensical impulse to roll eyes he didn’t have. “Yes.  I only _wish_ I could forget Lup.”

“Well I guess it’s just great for you that she’s gone, huh?” Taako screamed, voice rising in hysterics. Kravitz flinched. He could see where Taako was coming from there. Lup’s anger had been fascinating, all pointed fury and roaring violence. Taako’s anger was riddled with numb fatigue.

Kravitz couldn’t yell, not exactly, but he could augment his voice with more volume and vibration. Taako hadn’t seemed to realize how much of the room Kravitz occupied.  He jumped in shock when Kravitz spoke. “I’m not a fan of whatever masochistic kick you’re on and I don’t have time to deal with it. Great, fine, you’re both mad at me—I’m plenty pissed at you too.”

Taako gaped. “Back that the fuck up, what does that mean?!”

“Don’t play dumb,” Kravitz said with an aborted tremor that might have been a huff if he’d had lungs. “You think I don’t know about her Sendings? She’s been doing little else besides charbroiling my zombies for two days; I think she would’ve mentioned it.”

Taako’s expression closed off. He narrowed his eyes. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, man. Are you for fuckin’ real?”

 “I know I told you how magic works around here—I don’t have to let those through, you know.”

“You—wait, wait,” Taako said. He staggered to his feet and glared directly at Kravitz. As if being on what was eye-level for most creatures made a difference. Kravitz was an amalgamation of shadows, his selectively-substantial form layered on the floor around them as much as anywhere. Taako was skin and bones wrapped under layers of dirty clothes. Pointy chin, long fingers, draping hair—not anything like a threat. He balled his fists, but Kravitz doubted he could throw a good punch even on his best days.

Taako tipped dangerously. Kravitz looped shadows around his knees and back to steady him. Taako was too weak to pull off indignation, but he drew in a deep breath and bared all his teeth. Kravitz cut him off before he could yell.

“Stop. I know what you’re thinking—I’m not gonna clear you to reply. No outgoing magic messages, let’s not have you commit suicide via my father.”

Taako opened and closed his mouth even as his eyes unfocused. Kravitz couldn’t tell if he was speechless or dizzy, but he hoped it was the former. Taako sagged heavily against his grip and sucked down air like he’d been drowning. Kravitz winced; he didn’t want to drop Taako, but he _really_ didn’t want to be vomited on.

It took a moment for Taako to clear his head enough to speak. “I thought those were hallucinations.”

Kravitz leaned back from Taako and just…blocked his senses, for a moment. He needed to not look at the elf’s stupid face. “I hope you’re only this slow because you’ve been starving yourself. You watched her leave the room, Taako! I didn’t piss my dad off by making him spare her soul for you to _not notice!_ ”

“The fucking Sendings felt wrong because of your bullshit magic castle!” Taako shrieked over him, voice cracking, “And what the fuck—is she a _ghost_ now? What’d you do to her? Why isn’t she _here?_ ”

Taako answered his own question before Kravitz even had time to fathom the depths of his ignorance. “Because of the bullshit magic- _absorbing_ -castle. It fuckin’ eats souls.”

“Yes, the castle’s a necromantic sinkhole for magic energy, which is why you shouldn’t roll around on the floor! Any soul would flee instinctively,” Kravitz said, faintly relieved that Taako seemed to get it.

“FUCK!” Taako shouted, kicking wildly. Kravitz rolled back the shadows around Taako’s feet in a hurry. “I knew we were running out of spells too fast!”

Why did Kravitz have to _care?_ Why didn’t he have anything better to do with his time than let mortals aggravate him? Kravitz felt like there was something interesting about Taako he couldn’t name, but he could name _many_ obnoxious things about him. Were the zombies really any more tedious than this? Was it really worth it, letting Taako fidget and wriggle in his shadows like he was trying to get comfortable?

Taako finally arranged his bony ass and filthy trousers to his liking. He crossed his legs imperiously and lounged in Kravitz’s grip like he was on a throne. “Why don’t you just kill me too, my man? That how it works, I go ghost and fly off?”

“You mean that wasn’t your plan already? That’s _not_ how it works, Taako—maybe you’d be a regular ghost, but—”

“Lup’s not,” Taako said evenly. He propped his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers. He gave every impression of someone planning a deal or a meeting or anything far less significant than suicide. But he did look close to death—his skin was pale, his pulse thready, and it didn’t make Kravitz feel any better to know the blood staining Taako’s shirt wasn’t his.

“Break it down for me, Kravitz. What’s up with my ghostly sister casting spells? I thought that wasn’t a thing.”

“I know you’re only asking because you’d like to go join her, and I’m only gonna tell you because that’s impossible,” Kravitz said. “Unless you think you can get my father to do you a favor. He’s not a reasonable man, Taako.”

“Answer the fuckin’ question,” Taako snapped. “I’m not here for your relationship issues with your asshole dad.”

Kravitz went intangible and dumped Taako to the floor. Then he surged down to meet him. Taako transitioned directly from surprise to a haughty sneer, raising his chin at Kravitz even though his pooled, messy braid was the only thing cushioning his neck from the sapping pull of dark magic.

“Living souls are called spirits, and have two separate components that wax and wane with the body’s strength,” Kravitz said. He felt a twinge of regret for dropping Taako, but the elf’s narrowed eyes showed far more anger than pain. His ears went so flat that they finally slid free of his draping hair.

“Right, right, arcane energy and the other bullshit, get on with it.”

“The other bull—? _Vitality_ , Taako. Remember that? Feeling healthy?”

“Sounds fake but okay.”

“Gods,” Kravitz said, rearing up. “Don’t move—don’t touch the floor, at least.”

“Fine, floor’s lava, whatever the fuck.” Taako said. He turned his head to follow Kravitz’s path towards the door, even though it dragged his eartips over the stone. If they fell off it’d serve him right.

Kravitz sent enough of his shadows forward to shout orders down the stairs. There should be plenty of zombies in range. He’d just have to hope no one else heard him. He could sense the undead below; the grimy film of magic animating them, like oil clots in dirt that deepened to rot-sweet pools when probed. He felt an absurd throb of hatred for his charges. They were gross, but he’d had long enough to get used to that.

“Tell your zombie horde to get me some fuckin’—like blankets or some shit, too, that’d be cool,” Taako said, listening to Kravitz rattle off his list. “But also, back to me? _Why_ aren’t I dead? The fuck are you getting out of this?”

Kravitz consolidated himself and drifted back to Taako. “Taako, remember in the throne room, when my father—when your sister’s soul—”

“You mean when your dad made like he was going to _vore_ my sister?”

“I—I didn’t want to know that word, thanks,” Kravitz said. He extended a shadow to Taako like a hand. Taako gave it a dubious look and then pressed his fingernails in and dragged them like claws.

“What was that?” Kravitz said, pulling back. That actually twinged.

“Nothing, my man. Just butterfingers. Keep talking.”

Kravitz made to lever Taako up by the shoulders again, since that seemed to be his safest option. Taako crossed his arms and remained resolutely unhelpful. “Yuck—I’m going to take your boots off,” Kravitz said, feeling the thick coating of muck on their soles against him. So much for his bath. He never had gotten the hang of whether dirt would stick to him or not.

“Do fuckin’ _not_ , it’s freezing in here,” Taako said. Kravitz hooked a tendril around Taako’s ankle. “I probably have mad foot odor! Desist!”

“I can’t smell. And isn’t this bad for your circulation, anyway?” Kravitz said. “You shouldn’t sleep in boots, you’ll lose your toes.”

“What the fuck would you even know about toes!” Taako griped, but he didn’t pull his foot away. Kravitz, however, failed to muster the dexterity to undo the laces. He tried to tug them off. Taako curled forward and batted him away, untying his boots properly and then throwing them aside. His socks had—little ribbons on them? _That_ wasn’t a style that went with old leather boots.

“Are you avoiding my question, or do you have a thing for feet?” Taako said, wiggling his toes. Kravitz pointedly didn’t look, and then remembered that he didn’t have a face.

“ _You_ distracted _me_ ,” Kravitz said. “But what I was getting to, is that—”

“That your asshole dad rolled Lup’s vitality in her arcane energy like he was making cinnamon balls, so now she’s a superpowered magic ghost. I was there.”

Kravitz did his best to nonverbally communicate sheer exasperation. “I figured it out while you were feeling up my ankle,” Taako said. But he didn’t sound smug. He sounded—sad. “If I was gonna make something up to reassure me, that’s the most believable thing you could go with.”

Taako thrashed away abruptly, planting his socked feet against the floor and standing firm. He ignored the shadows fluttering around his ankles until Kravitz reached for him, and then he stomped a solidifying tendril _hard_. Kravitz recoiled from the pain. But a larger part of him was riveted by Taako’s every move. His spirit was _fizzing_ , surging from the barest whisper of life to a deafening tumult of emotion. Kravitz was wholly unprepared.  He withdrew from Taako, but it was a struggle—all the shadows in the room bent towards him, drawn in as if by magnetism.

What had just happened here? He’d thought Taako was cheering up! (He’d thought Taako was dying.) How had their conversation fallen apart so quickly? Kravitz had saved Taako’s life, tried to save Lup’s, and all he wanted in return was some halfway decent company. It was the elves’ fault that they’d drawn attention to themselves. Kravitz knew the other survivors were building the north side of town into a bastion. They could last for some months before his father ordered them cleared out.

Taako couldn’t make Kravitz do a damn thing. Taako could barely stand. Kravitz had all the power here and flaunting that held no appeal. His older siblings were sadists, but Kravitz didn’t enjoy pain or terror like they did. No, he might be more like their father in the end—disdainful of mortals, bored by their trifling, petty issues. Maybe in a few decades. For now, though, he grudgingly had to admit that Taako had good reasons to be upset. Even if he was acting like a child over it.

He was determined to give Taako space, but Kravitz was in worse shape than he’d thought. Resisting the pull of Taako’s energy _ached_. He felt for his connection with the keep’s magic instead—viscid and tacky, bitter at the edges and putrid at the core. Not pleasant. Liable to get him in trouble, even, if his father was paying attention. He shouldn’t be sparing Taako. It would be so much easier to kill him and get it over with. But after today Kravitz had a _lot_ of enemies he should’ve killed when he had the chance.

He wasn’t sure why he didn’t regret eliminating them, not like he was sure of his anger. “What the fuck is your problem?” Kravitz snapped.

“You, asshole! You and your dad are—are my entire problem!” Taako shouted. “I don’t believe you for one fuckin’ second! What’s your _‘game’_?!”

“You want to know my game, Taako? I thought you were there!” Kravitz shouted back. Every surface in the room resonated with the vibrations. A sheen of sweat broke out on Taako’s face. He reeled with nausea, but it was up to him to stay standing. Kravitz was done coddling him.

“Yeah, I _was_ there!” Taako said, voice wavering. “This is about your gross soul vore thing, isn’t it? Sucking down vitality and magic like cheap beer?”

“Of course that’s what my father would agree to, Taako!” Kravitz said. “It’s called a _deal!_ And I mean—yes, but it’s worth something that I don’t want you dead.”

“No it fuckin’ isn’t. Here’s a headline for you: _Taako_ _doesn’t care_. I have nothing and no-one! I’m _out_.”

“Fine,” Kravitz said. “I’d thought we were having a pleasant conversation, but I guess not! I guess you just want to sit in here and wait for death, huh!” He drew a shadow, razor-thin and sharp, across the arch of Taako’s foot. Taako startled and toppled to the ground. The cut was a sliver but it went straight through his sock. Kravitz could feel each drop of living blood well up like tiny, gem-bright beads. He—he wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking. Kravitz was repulsed at the idea of destroying a soul and Taako didn’t have magic left to take. Any further contact would be like sniffing the cork of an empty wine bottle.

Kravitz withdrew from Taako, let the elf wobble back to his feet. He lingered in the room and was rewarded when Taako entertained him with a good fight. Taako shouted expletives and inventive deprecations. Kravitz shouted back—don’t bait the undead, eat some food, don’t leave the room, maybe a few unkind things about Taako’s general idiocy and self-destruction.

Eventually Kravitz felt the servants returning and swept out of the room. He watched the procession of undead dragging objects up the staircase. He hadn’t rested like he planned, was still fatigued and frayed. He couldn’t rest, now—he wouldn’t trust Taako alone with the undead, even when they were strictly ordered to act as couriers.

He’d have to stick around and watch what Taako chose to do with all this stuff. He found he didn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another flashfoward chapter starring Taako. Barry going to jail was the end of the first planned arc actually. Up next: the loon with the axe and the fat dwarf give Kravitz a very bad day, but not as bad as Barry's. At least until Barry makes some new friends.
> 
> I did plan for exactly what Krav's deal is in this AU. All speculation will be cherished and squealed over.


	7. Stuck around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus and Merle are exactly the backup the BoB needs.

Merle was too short to see the dome that emerged over the tree line. Magnus couldn’t describe it any better than the refugees they’d met on the road this past week. It was big, it was black, and it was probably between Merle and his family.

And, to hear the refugees tell it, the dome was expanding. One woman swore it had crept through her house overnight. There were no stories about people being consumed by the dome, but the streets it overshadowed were lost meter by meter. Hundreds had already fled. The roads were a riot, with all of Westgate’s remaining guard needed to keep order within the last free neighborhoods. It was no wonder that caravan traffic had stalled. _Magnus_ was almost too large to shoulder his way through the crowds, never mind a wagon.

There were families camping on the embankments and the border of the woods, lines of people cutting through the countryside from one road to another, dozens huddled and sleeping on bare ground.

Magnus felt selfish, watching them and thinking only of Julia.

They’d lived what felt like ten lives crammed into two years. He had a thousand perfect images of her—Julia staring down soldiers with her hands on her hips, grinning with a forge-hot sword, furrowing her brow while she distributed bandages. Julia at the dinner table with Steven, breaking into jars of preserved vegetables. Julia wiping blood from his face, scolding him until she realized that he was watching her full lips in a haze, too dazed to listen to a word she said. Julia squeezing his hand in a tavern, standing with him to rally a crowd of their allies. Julia crying quietly in her father’s kitchen, staring down at the bow she’d used to make her first kill.

Magnus’s first kills had been in that fight too. It hadn’t meant much to him, not with Julia’s safety on the line. Dissidence, negotiation, and sabotage had all failed; violence was the inevitable next step.

The last step after the escalating battles should’ve been to kill Kalen. But Magnus hadn’t wanted that. He’d wanted to see Julia at peace. And, for a year, he’d lived that dream. He’d cried with Julia for their losses. Then they’d rolled up their sleeves and gotten to work. He saw her beating grime out of blankets, re-shingling roofs, laughing in the sunlight and dancing in the street. Julia hammered swords into plowshares. Magnus followed at her heels, orbiting her like his personal sun.

He turned his hand to woodworking because of her and Steven’s support. He had been so, so happy to slot himself into their family. He spent mornings sanding and hammering, evenings curled up next to Julia in taverns. Stole kisses while their friends whooped and toasted them.

Magnus proposed twice; first in the deserted garden of the old governor’s mansion, half-demolished. He’d been there to help carry out furniture designated for auction. She’d been examining the wrought-iron fence, judging whether the metal could be reused. His second proposal was a staged, public affair for the benefit of Steven and their friends. The first one, though—she’d said yes, she’d grabbed his collar and kissed him breathless, she’d shoved him backwards behind a tree and worked her hands under his clothes. She’d been perfect.

They’d lived as a married couple for four months. He hadn’t even finished building their house. There’d been so much to do. Before the rebellion, Magnus had thought of himself as a grunt. He’d gone in as another body on the front lines and come out a leader.  He was surprised, after, to find that a thriving Raven’s Roost didn’t need him any less. If anything, he’d never felt more secure. His future with the Waxmens stretched out in front of him. Julia promised him more years than he could conceive of.

Woodworking started as something Magnus did to make himself useful to Steven. Dedication did for him what talent couldn’t. He hadn’t known what it would be like to be valued for something he made, to be proud of his own work. Steven had said that Magnus’s rocking chair was good enough to represent their shop at the craftsmen showcase in Neverwinter. Julia had kissed away his tears of joy.

Neverwinter was so far away from Raven’s Roost that no one there had heard of Kalen or the rebellion. Magnus hadn’t talked about it. He’d gushed about his beautiful new wife and their shop and come home to find both destroyed.

Istus’s appearance had meant very little to him. She couldn’t bring his family or friends back. Magnus left his rocking chair, his masterpiece, to mark Julia and Steven’s graves. Killing Kalen with Istus’s lance was the last loose end in Magnus’s life.

Two towns destroyed in as many weeks, separated by a distance that could be crossed by boat and cart in three days. Magnus didn’t have any tears left for Westgate. His tragedy was over.

Merle, though—fat, crude, generous Merle, with his curmudgeonly griping, persistent incompetence, and intractable kindness–maybe still had family, somewhere within the dome ahead. And Magnus didn’t have a better use for himself.

Plenty of people stared, but no one stopped Magnus and Merle from heading into Westgate. The gate across the road to Neverwinter was flung open. It was easy enough to follow the road all the way up to the barrier. Nobody else had business at the dome’s border. The makeshift guard station had been cautiously erected more than a hundred meters away and few dared to venture any closer than that. The buildings the dome crept through had been evacuated. Magnus broke into one and examined the division between plaster walls and devouring black. There were faint signs of stress and buckling—not as much as he’d expect in an outright demolition, but the dome didn’t swallow gently.

He emerged at dusk, when the sun sunk too low for any useful light to reach the windows. Magnus hoped, walking out, that the guards had been able to tell Merle that his family had somehow found themselves in the free northwest quarter when the dome appeared. But there he was, sprawled indecorously at the guard station and heckling them with one of his crumpled newspapers. They shot Magnus looks of pure gratitude when Merle clambered to his feet and waddled over to him.

“You wouldn’t believe how useless these guards are,” Merle said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. They resolutely ignored him. “These guys have found out diddly-squat about the dome thing. The only reason they’re sure Hekuba’s not out here is ‘cause it’d be a big deal if any more doctors made it.”

Magnus hadn’t expected much from guards who were too beleaguered to care that he was walking around with a giant ornate lance strapped to his back. “That, and you’re dwarves.”

“Be rude about it, why don’t cha,” Merle said. After a week of his griping Magnus had learned not to take him seriously. “Well, kid? Whaddaya wanna do now?”

What did _he_ want to do? Merle was the one who had family on the line. A lot of people here had families on the line, Magnus figured. Kalen’s bombs collapsed a single pillar in the craftsmen’s corridor. A few dozen dead at most. This was three-quarters of a town entrapped, or maybe destroyed. Thousands of people.

Magnus wished he’d paid a little more attention to Istus’s speech. Magnus wished he was done with tragedy.

“I’m gonna pop it,” he said, staring the dome down. He pulled the lance off his back and strode forward.

“With Ichthus ’s toothpick, there?” Merle said, jogging to keep up with him.

Up-close the dome looked like a vertical black wall. It didn’t reflect anything, not even in bright sunlight. Dusk made it look like they were standing at the edge of the world.

Magnus scooped up a rock and chucked it at the dome. The rock bounced off. “This _lance_ is more than twice the size of your entire body, old man.”

Merle laughed. “Hey, hey—I’m sure Ibis has her tricks. But it’s not _me_ you’re trying to pop. That thing’s the size of a freakin’ city!”

“A _small_ city,” Magnus said. “Three-quarters of a small city.”

“Those’re called towns, kid.”

“ _You_ said—you know what, never mind. Let’s just do this.”

Magnus hefted Istus’s lance. His muscles bulged from the weight. It was two meters of solid iron; heavier than a sword, almost long enough to be unwieldy. He’d carried heavier burdens. He remembered how it’d felt the last time he used this lance. Anger coursing through him, adrenaline numbing him to pain. The lance had been like an extension of his arm. His shoulder still felt the memory of skewering Kalen, pinning his body to the carriage. Of twisting to embed the lance’s point deep in the wood. Magnus had only registered the terror on Kalen’s face after letting his hand drop.

Magnus threw his body into the thrust. The lance’s tip skated off the dome and rebounded back, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“Good try, Maggie,” Merle said, clapping lightly. “Wanna eat dinner now?”

Magnus growled and struck the dome again. And again. It felt like—it felt like the tip of his lance was catching on something. He wasn’t sure what the dome was made of. He’d maybe lick it if someone dared him, but touching it with his bare hands seemed like a bad idea.

“I want to get through this thing,” Magnus said. He pressed his lance into the dome and scraped it across the surface as hard as he could. He couldn’t see any damage, but he definitely felt something like a change in texture. “Any cleric thing you can do? Like, magic?”

“Hey, you’re right!” Merle said, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “This does look like magic. Give me a sec.”

Magnus watched incredulously as Merle dug into his pack. He let Merle get as far as pulling out a battered book stuffed full of loose notecards before turning back to the dome.

After his next blow he thought he saw a faint spark, like flint striking steel. He tried to hit the same spot and saw an unmistakable flash of light.

“Alright, here we go,” Merle said. “I can _enhance_ your _ability_! How’s bull’s strength sound?”

“Do it,” Magnus said. Merle slapped his elbow and the lance lightened to nothing in his hands. The guards were chatting idly, watching them with bored expressions. Magnus drove the point of Istus’s lance into the dome and they fell silent. He wedged it deep. The sound that resounded was a muffled clack, like water rushing through loose gravel.

Still not enough. Magnus tugged the lance out easily and found that he couldn’t see where the crack had been. It was too dark. “Can you get a lamp or something?” he asked.

“I’ll do you one better, kid,” Merle said. He raised a hand and loosed a small bolt of light.

The light hit the dome and stuck there. A fist-sized circle of radiant, glittering heat spread. White-hot in the center, deepening to red at the edges, the border where it met the dome grey like dark iron. Magnus spent a long moment remembering Julia in her workshop, sweat streaking her face as she bent over the anvil.

Merle jabbed him in the hip. Magnus threw his full weight behind his strike and felt the lance meet and push through resistance. The tip reflected light from Merle’s bolt before sliding forward into the black. A head-sized chunk of the dome crumbled away, smoking at the edges.

“Holy shit!” Magnus shouted. The guards abandoned their station and jogged towards him. Magnus adjusted his grip on the lance and forced it downward. The ornate designs decorating the tip caught the light from Merle’s bolt and amplified it, melting the dome like rubber. But the mist pouring from the far side congealed in strands around the widening crack.

Magnus wrenched the lance like a crowbar and gouged out a chunk of black as large as his torso. The last of the guiding light faded. “Let’s go, let’s go!” he said. He crooked an elbow to keep the lance in place and caught Merle around his ribs. The guards shouted. Magnus rushed in through the shrinking hole lance-first, Merle cursing against his chest.

Magnus’s jump barely cleared the bottom of the hole. He hit the ground hard and rolled, arms around Merle to shield him. Then he looked up directly into the barrel of a cannon.

There were two men behind the cannon in the center of the road, both in blue uniform jackets. One wore his over a rumpled guard uniform and the other carried a lit torch and, improbably, a violin case. Magnus joined the guard in shouting “ _holy shit!_ ” until Merle kicked him in the ribs.

“Oops, sorry buddy,” Magnus said, using the lance to push himself up and off Merle. The creeping black mist sealed over the gap in the dome by the time they got out of the cannon’s way. “Uh—hail and well met, strangers! My name is Magnus Burnsides, and this is Merle.”

“And these are my eight bruised ribs,” Merle said.

The cannoneer gaped. “How’d you get in here? Uh, I’m Avi.”

“The will of Pan! Don’t point that thing at me,” Merle said. “What the hell’s the cannon for?”

“We’ve been trying to break out for like a week,” Avi said. “Nothing else’s gotten through that barrier.”

“Eleven days,” his companion said, drawling his words in the most depressed tone Magnus had ever heard. “I’m Johann. I told him the cannon was a bad idea. Who’s Pan?”

“Don’t ask,” Magnus said over Merle’s protests. “Seriously, Merle, shut it.”

“Fine! Geez kid,” Merle said. “Nice to see people alive in here. How have you guys been? Who’s dead?”

“ _Merle!_ ”

“Who _isn’t_ dead?” Johann said. “Well, actually, I guess…a lot of people.”

“Oh man, we need to take you guys to Lucretia,” Avi said. “She’s in charge—she was the Burgermeister’s secretary. She founded this—it’s called the Battalion—”

“I thought we were the Bureau,” Johann said. “We deal with survivors.”

Magnus strapped Istus’s lance to his back with a broad grin. “Okay so, that phrasing’s kind of ominous. But we’re looking for survivors. Would you guys know if Merle’s ex-wife and kids are okay?”

Avi and Johann wouldn’t, but they assured Magnus and Merle that somebody back at base would. The Bureau was working on a rough census. They’d taken over the docks and surrounding neighborhoods of Tidetown, including the warehouses that held the bulk of the city’s food stores. Lucretia’s people formed the backbone of Westgate’s organization, along with the guard that had been trapped under the dome. Most of their efforts went towards security and distributing supplies.

Johann led them through the empty streets. It wasn’t much different from a winter night. The city was dark and quiet, the air chilled and stagnant. They passed abandoned buildings for several minutes, catching glimpses of guards with lamps and torches stationed across the streets. Market stalls stood empty, looted or abandoned, and guards supervised bonfires in open plazas. There wasn’t any wind to carry the smoke away; the air was thick and acrid around the plazas, but the warmth drew a crowd nonetheless. When they were almost to the sea they found stretches of occupied houses guarded by loose knots of civilians with makeshift weapons. Magnus couldn’t smell the seawater even right at the edge of the docks.

“So this lady was the Burgermeister’s secretary? Where’s he in all of this?” Merle asked, trotting over the soggy planked path along the south edge of the docks.

“Dead,” Avi said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “Him and the whole council, as far as anyone knows.”

“That’s a shame,” Merle said.

“No, trust me, it really isn’t,” Avi said, stopping outside one of the warehouses. The whitewashed doors had a sloppy motif painted on them, vertical lines with four triangles surrounding a central diamond. None of the lines were straight. Avi shoved the door open and led them in.

Most of the shelves were empty, letting a bare handful of lamps fill the room with dim light. The back of the room was closed off by a hanging tarp. Avi pushed it aside to reveal a gangly elf in a suit, going through papers on a crate that had been set up as a makeshift desk. He startled and narrowed his eyes at them.

“Hey Jenkins,” Avi said. “Is Lucretia around?”

“Cadet Avi,” he said icily. “The _Madame Director_ has stepped out and should be back shortly. Who are these?”

“They broke in through the barrier!” Avi said.

Jenkins dropped all of his papers. “They what?! That’s in _no way_ possible!”

“They what?” echoed a woman’s voice. She flailed against the tarp at the opposite side from the entrance Avi had used, finally finding a grip at the bottom. She pulled up the tarp and ducked in, catching her staff in the fabric. She tugged it free, smoothed her robes, and then drew herself up to a regal height. The effect was somewhat ruined by her rumpled white hair. “Hello, and welcome to the Bastion of Beneficence. I’m the director.”

“I thought we were a battalion?” Avi said. Johann mouthed ‘bureau’ behind him.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be with you in a moment,” Lucretia said to Magnus. “Jenkins? Have you seen Angus?”

Jenkins’s lips thinned over his teeth. “Ah, I thought it was strange to have a moment without the boy underfoot. Might he be with Captain Davenport?”

“I’m afraid not,” Lucretia shook her head. “I was just with the captain.”

“Your time is valuable, Madam Director,” Jenkins said. “You should encourage him to take breaks from your attention. I’m sure he’s fine. The boy is perfectly capable of entertaining himself.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Lucretia said. “Now—how the hell did you two get in here?”

“Uh, I brought them, ma’am. Sorry?” Avi said.

Lucretia pinched the bridge of her nose. “I mean, how did they break through the barrier?”

Merle and Magnus described the process as best they could. Merle even turned up one of the crumpled pamphlets advertising his god and passed it around the room. Lucretia grabbed a pen and paper to take notes.

“Let me take notes as well,” Jenkins said, leaning across Lucretia’s desk for a pen. “I am our _Lead Wizard_. You are describing an impossibility, but perhaps my knowledge could help us illuminate the issue.”

“Bull’s strength and guiding bolt,” Merle said. “Y’ain’t tried that yet? Pretty basic stuff.”

“Kind of a shitty wizard,” Magnus whispered in undertone. Merle chuckled.

Jenkins glared. “Did anyone witness something that could verify these men’s claims?”

Avi and Johann raised their hands. “We saw the whole thing,” Johann said.

“That’s incredible!” Lucretia said. “This could be the breakthrough we need. Good work, boys. Jenkins?”

“It sounds like it’s best that I examine the site of the breach immediately,” Jenkins said. “May I have an escort?”

“Johann, Avi, please accompany him?” Lucretia asked. She waved them out of the room and then turned to Magnus. “Please don’t antagonize Jenkins.”

“The kid’s sorry,” Merle said dismissively. “I’m lookin’ for my family, Madame. Hekuba Roughridge and kids.”

Lucretia scribbled the name down. “Dwarves?” Merle nodded. “We have people taking the names of the survivors and handling reunion efforts. I’ll pass this to someone ASAP. Can you tell me the name of the neighborhood they would have been in?”

“Uh—nope, ‘fraid not.”

“Well that—that doesn’t narrow things down for us, at all. But we’ll do our best. Now I’m very sorry, but my time is at a premium here—we need all the hands we can get, and we simply don’t have enough people. Can I ask what you boys do?”

“I’m Merle, a cleric of Pan,” Merle said. “Magnus here’s my bodyguard.”

“Well, we certainly need all the magic users we can get.”

Magnus snorted. “Yeah, we can tell. Was that guy your only wizard?”

Lucretia rolled her eyes. “We have a necromancer we can…consult. In custody. We haven’t established his motives yet.”

“I’ve got this lance from Istus,” Magnus said. “That’s magic.”

“From _Istus?_ ”

Magnus shrugged. “Yeah, really.”

“No, no—I believe you. May I?”

Magnus passed Lucretia the lance. Her arms buckled under the weight when he released it. She had to leave her staff leaning against her desk and use both hands to prop the lance next to it.

“What did she say to you?” Lucretia asked, seizing her pen. She began a rough sketch, paying particular attention to the needle’s-eye top of the staff and the curlicues and diamonds at the lance’s tip.

Magnus recounted the story as best he could. His throat was thick around the words. He didn’t want sympathy for Julia and Raven’s Roost from a stranger. But that was all he’d cared to pay attention to during his brief conversation with Istus. What little else he remembered was frustratingly vague—a warning about calamity, something about weaving, and a promise that he’d be needed.

Lucretia nodded like his heavily-abridged story made sense. “I spoke to her as well. Magnus, we’re lucky to have you. What we’ve learned about the dome is that it’s a powerful magical phenomenon. Unfortunately, we have not—”

“ _Hey boss_!” someone called from outside. Magnus heard running footsteps and then a tiny lizard person plunged through the canvas wall, nearly bringing the whole thing down. She was wearing the same blue jacket that all Lucretia’s people did and carrying a bundle of crossbow bolts.

“Carey,” Lucretia said. “I don’t know why I thought those curtains would be a good idea. They certainly haven’t gotten me privacy.”

“Sorry ma’am! Emergency!” she said.

Magnus and Lucretia lunged for their weapons at the same moment, nearly tripping each other. Merle guffawed. “We’ve got a _big_ breach,” Carey said. “Captain Bain’s on it—like, he’s gotta be, it’s right at his garrison.”

Lucretia’s free hand went to the chain around her neck. “I haven’t heard anything over farspeech,” she said.

“Killian’s out there, and we’ve got an evacuation underway,” Carey said. “We’ve got twelve, maybe fifteen boots on the ground? Plus the guards.” Lucretia cursed.

“What’s going on?” Magnus asked. “You guys are making it sound like we’re under some kind of attack.”

The ridges over Carey’s eyes went up and her nostrils flared. Magnus hadn’t met anybody with scales before, but he could read the incredulity on her face just fine. “We are, genius,” she said. “The zombies?”

“The what?” Merle said.

“Take these two with you, Carey,” Lucretia said. “I’ll coordinate more backup. We’ve got to make sure the intervening streets are safe.”

“No really, the _what?_ ” Magnus repeated.

Carey beat the curtain back so they could follow her out. “I’ll explain on the way,” she said. “Move it!”

Merle couldn’t keep up. Magnus extended his arms and made a grabby-handed offer to carry him and got his wrist slapped. Carey jogged in circles around them before settling into a more sedate pace. She heckled them to keep moving, which was funny, but not informative.

“Okay, again, I need to ask again: zombies?” Magnus said.

“Is that spear for show or what?” Carey said. “Pointy end in the skull!”

Magnus and Carey outstripped Merle after about four blocks. They couldn’t slow down, not with the clamor of a skirmish just out of sight down the street. Torchlight approaching them resolved into exhausted-looking families. Carey barely gave them a glance. She and Magnus fixed their eyes on the flickering orange around the street’s bend—far too bright to be torches.

A massive blaze roared along the far side of the central road, a stone’s throw from the squat garrison. Magnus made out iron spokes of torched wagons amidst the flames. The barricade, mostly wooden, was crumbling into the fire. The whole street reeked of burning timber, tar, and flesh. A couple dozen people held a loose line against the charred figures stumbling through the gaps. One good blow crumbled the zombies, but there were so many.

“Got you more bolts, babe!” Carey shouted, leaping to an orc woman on the front lines. She handed off the bundle and drew daggers from her belt in the same motion. “What’s the situation?”

“It’s that fucking necromancer, I’m sure of it,” Kilian said. “Why else would they attack here?”

“What genius started the fire?” Magnus asked.

“Nobody saw,” Killian said. “And, get this: we can’t find Captain Bain.”

A zombie lurched into view. Its flesh and clothes alike were melted into an unrecognizable mess. Magnus hefted his lance, glad it didn’t look more like a person. It crumpled to the ground with one of Killian’s bolts in its skull before he could move.

The fight devolved into pandemonium. They didn’t have enough people to cover the whole barricade. More and more zombies slipped through, barely singed from the dying fire. Magnus broke fingers under his boots and crushed skulls with his lance. Carey flung daggers faster than his eye could track, but she had to dart over to her kills and retrieve ammo at intervals. Before long they were driven back far enough that Killian couldn’t get clean shots with her crossbow. Magnus ran out of elbow room to swing his lance and switched to his axe. By the time Merle waddled around the corner they’d retreated half the width of the street. In another few minutes their backs would be against the garrison wall.

Magnus couldn’t tell if they’d lost anyone. Too many people moving on a dark street. The torches threw writhing shadows that seemed darker than they should be, moving erratically in the periphery of Magnus’s vision and distracting him from the zombies. During the Raven’s Roost rebellion he’d trained his forces on formations and signals. He never would’ve led a fight under these circumstances anyway—not in the dark, not without cover or some kind of high ground. It was clear the BoB people and civilians had little experience fighting alongside the guard. They needed to watch each other’s backs for stray zombies. Instead, the guards kept clumping into little knots and the civilians had no idea where to stand. It was only a matter of time until someone accidentally struck an ally.

A flare lit the horizon. Magnus thought it was the last splutters of the burning barricade. But it didn’t die out. It didn’t even flicker; the light grew steadier, more insistent, casting the horde in red and pink like approaching dawn. There were so many more zombies than Magnus had thought. Someone needed to get everyone moving back towards the docks. He’d cover their retreat, so Merle and these people could make it back to their families.

Then the light touched down at the barricade and a row of zombies burst into howling flames. The rest of the horde actually turned towards it, the first thing Magnus had seen them do other than shamble mindlessly. Killian, sword drawn, led a charge forward. They cleaved into the horde and reclaimed precious meters. Magnus felled four zombies in as many seconds and caught a breath as a rolling wave of fire crashed back towards the barricade, immolating everything in its wake.

Killian blew a lock of hair out of her face. “So, this is great, but I have no idea what’s going on. That fire’s gotta be some magic-something.”

“Merle?” Magnus called.

Merle hung back, flipping through his book and grabbing for loose notecards. “Heck if I know, kid. Hope it doesn’t come this way.”

“Killian, you need to get everyone out of here!” Magnus said. “We don’t have this under control.”

“That’s a real shame,” said a new voice. Magnus turned to see swathes of black in stark relief against the lamplight from the garrison’s windows. The speaker was a figure standing amidst the impossible shadows, body completely obscured. “The party’s just getting started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmm been a while. Busy month, actual paying work, etc. Please leave a comment/kudos if you enjoyed, cos this project is fueled by validation.
> 
> Rebuilt my buffer, so there's a 6.5k chapter guaranteed to come out soon.


	8. Keeping score

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angus investigates some mysteries and gets in over his head.

The McDonalds’s staff hadn’t seen a reason to listen to Angus. It was so frustrating, knowing exactly why—he was new to the household, and a little boy besides—and not being able to do anything to change their minds. They’d treated him like a nuisance since his grandfather’s death. Angus knew he was due to inherit, that most of these people would work for him. No one else was left in his family. But the executor of his grandfather’s will kept saying he needed more time to review before he shared any details. Angus was hidden behind the curtain in his grandfather’s study, listening in on a meeting he’d been banned from, when darkness swallowed the afternoon sun.

Angus couldn’t cry out. The curtains were opaque and the steward and lawyer were oblivious to whatever had just happened. He didn’t want to get caught. He figured he only had minutes to wait before some servant came knocking with the news. He’d sneak away once everyone was distracted. Instead, the ground bucked under his feet and the window shattered.

He’d been okay, really. Barely bleeding at all! But the staff hadn’t seen it that way. A nurse had picked glass shards out of his hands and knees locked him in his bedroom with dinner. Desperate for news, he’d rung for servants. Out his window he could see lamps bobbing in the dark. It was obvious that he’d been forgotten in the chaos. He spent a long time on his window seat, skimming a book by lamplight and tracking the people moving outside. Angus estimated that a good half of those that disappeared out the manor gates didn’t come back. Unlike him, they still had families to check on.

The remaining servants didn’t remember to let him out in the morning. Angus picked the lock on his door and went to the kitchen. An apologetic maid fixed breakfast for him. Too many people had fled; the household was on a skeleton crew. The butler and housekeeper knew Angus, of course, but he couldn’t persuade them to send anyone else to investigate the disaster outside. A footman had seen bands of what he described as rabid vagrants on the streets, they said. The sensible thing to do would be to mind the household and wait for the guard to send a messenger. They doubtlessly had their hands full, between the vanished sun and damage from the earthquake. Not to mention that the Lord Mayor’s feast had been last night, and rumor held that the palace was at the epicenter of whatever crisis had befallen Westgate.

It had been four days since grandfather’s funeral and the steward still hadn’t wrapped up the chaos caused by one single death. If the council and the Burgermeister and their staff and guests were endangered by the disaster, whatever it was, then the guard might not be able to check up on the McDonald estate for ages. And ignorance was always dangerous. Angus explained this reasoning to the butler and got banished to the library for the day.

Everyone worked hard to keep disquieting news from reaching his ears. But Angus was a very smart boy.  He was among the first to figure out that zombies were overtaking the city. The butler didn’t believe him until the fence around the estate was surrounded on all sides.

At that point the remaining staff descended into such panic that Angus was able to walk right in to his grandfather’s study, pick the lock on his desk in full view of four adults, and retrieve his stone of farspeech. His grandfather had been a councilmember and had a contact book with the names of virtually everyone important in town. Angus wasn’t surprised to make it through most of the book with no response.  He kept at it. A little pinprick of twinkling light shone near the base of the chain. Someone had tried to call his grandfather since the steward locked the stone away after the funeral. Hopefully they were still out there.

Ms. Lucretia had been thrilled to hear from Angus. Hours later he met Captain Davenport as well, when the forces he led broke through the zombies and escorted them to safety.

They were down four people by the time they made it over the garrison’s barricade. Angus couldn’t help but feel responsible. He’d pushed for evacuation harder than anyone. Logically, he knew that they’d have been overrun in hours. More people would have died if they’d tried to hunker down inside the manor, with the windows along the south face shattered open. But at least it wouldn’t have been his fault.

The surviving staff hadn’t liked Angus before he’d gotten some of them killed. He hid from them in the crowd when they reached the safe zone. Losing them wasn’t much of a change. It’d been years since he’d had a proper guardian. His grandfather had been disconnected from reality since before Angus met him. He’d rambled in circles, unable to respond to even the simplest of questions; whether he was warm or cold or hungry, what day it was, what his name was. Angus assumed he was allowed to remain on the council so someone else could use his vote.

Angus still missed him.

Fortunately, Ms. Lucretia let him stick close to her side. He probably reminded her of herself—young, studious, intelligent, and, until recently, under-recognized for it. She’d worked with his grandfather and sent an envoy to his funeral the previous week. She’d been at the palace the night of its destruction. Angus was supposed to have been too, had anyone been left to take him to the feast. He was sure she’d have wanted to save him like she saved Captain Davenport and Mr. Avi. He knew, though, that it was unlikely they would’ve crossed paths. In some ways he was lucky to have lost his grandfather.

Angus learned that every officer at the BoB kept records. Documentation was one of Ms. Lucretia’s core tenets. Captain Davenport’s logs were full of numbers and figures, notes in shorthand about the people and resources they had. Ms. Lucretia wrote meeting minutes out word-for-word, filling journals in looping scrawl impossibly fast. Angus followed at their heels and copied how they ran things. Within days he was taking virtually all of Captain Davenport’s notes for him.

Angus kept his own notes as well, in a tiny, private notebook. He tallied up all the ways he’d been close to death. It didn’t occur to him to show this diary to anyone, or to seek comfort when he woke up crying at night. In his experience children being soothed to sleep was a storybook thing, a wishful fantasy like secret parents coming to rescue their lost son.

Tracking the actual time felt pointless with no sun in the sky. Rested or not, Angus would throw himself out of whatever open bedroll he’d found. He told himself that his life hadn’t changed all that much. He’d always known that survival depended on understanding the world’s mysteries. Zombies raised the stakes but the rules were the same.  He’d learn how people worked here and become useful to them. He even had a leg up, since Captain Davenport and Ms. Lucretia seemed to like him.

Or at least they couldn’t afford to turn down anyone’s help.

The way the BoB ran was this: Captain Davenport and Ms. Lucretia deferred to each other. It was Ms. Lucretia’s status that gave them legitimacy, but Captain Davenport had far more leadership experience. They worked alongside the remaining guard, managing the survivors and reinforcing evacuation efforts. Cadet Avi and Corporal Killian were members of both organizations. The remaining BoB forces were recruited from civilians. Captain Davenport had a lot of contacts among the dockworkers that were eager to help out. Angus hadn’t quite figured out the common factor among Ms. Lucretia’s recruits—young women who seemed to be very good friends.

Angus gave himself four days to settle in before he decided to trust the anxiety roiling in his gut. All the BoB’s efforts had gone to plan. They had shelter, and food, and guards patrolling to keep the zombies at bay. But he realized the appearance of safety was superficial. They didn’t have the first clue as to where the barrier and zombies had come from—or what could be coming next.

Angus had taken to calling the first day of the crisis _the attack_ in his notes, because the facts were these: the rise of the black keep killed Westgate’s leadership, the barrier trapped most everyone else, and the zombies picked off the survivors. He didn’t need a motive to see that this was all part of somebody’s plan. Somebody who had inspired _Istus_ to save Ms. Lucretia and Captain Davenport, if their story could be believed. Her domain of Fate was so far above the affairs of mortal lives that Angus had never read about her taking direct action over _anything_ —not even dynasties or wars or disasters.

It followed that the survivors had a powerful enemy they knew nothing about. Someone powerful enough to force Istus’s hand. From there, nothing could be dismissed as coincidence. If Angus was out to kill everyone in Westgate then infiltrating the guard and the BoB would be an obvious plan.

It would be easy, too. So much chaos, so many dead, and the entire BoB under a week old. The closest they got to a uniform was blue jackets, and Ms. Lucretia kept waffling on the organization’s name. She hadn’t yet established a hierarchy for how information was shared. Angus played a game and found that it took him twenty minutes to walk out of headquarters with the Bureau/Battalion’s plans for the next two days. He didn’t even have to use any of the advantages conferred by being Captain Davenport’s unofficial assistant.

Angus had almost been ready to rule out Ms. Lucretia as a suspect. She’d let him listen in on the farspeech calls she made to the lone surviving necromancer, still loose somewhere in the city. Far enough away that the barrier’s magic intermittently disrupted the farspeech call. By all appearances she was picking his brain on the basics of necromancy and strategies for dealing with the zombies. Angus would’ve asked different questions, but he was fairly certain they weren’t exchanging coded information. Master Bluejeans stubbornly claimed to not know anything about how the barrier was constructed. He freely speculated, though, while defending the dead colleagues and anyone else he could’ve tried to cast suspicion on to clear his own name. Angus was inclined to believe him. Lucretia carefully avoided mentioning her staff or Istus. Smart, but Angus wished she’d steer the conversation to the kind of gods or demons that Istus might count as her enemies.

Then Lucretia and her bodyguards disappeared for hours. With _Jenkins_ , who’d straggled into the BoB the day after Angus and instantly rocketed to the top of his list. Angus had read Professor Miller’s papers. Jenkins’s name wasn’t anywhere in them, especially not as her assistant. Lucas vouched for Jenkins and Ms. Lucretia believed them both, so he circled their three names in his notebook and drew frowny faces around them.

If Lucretia was suspect, then there was only one person left for Angus to talk to. Captain Davenport was nearly impossible to pin down. He’d be everywhere at once, working with about twenty different people, and then vanish. Angus knew his whole to-do list and it still took him ages to corner Davenport. They’d been working for almost fourteen hours, no breaks for the last eight, when Davenport scooped up a tin of food and called for a quick rest. Angus tailed him out to the loading dock. Captain Davenport’s routine was to sneak off for meals, even when he wasn’t planning to be gross and eat tinned mackerel with his fingers. He seemed to Angus like a private person.

It was awful outside. A perpetual cloudy night, freezing and oppressive. Angus wore a thick coat everywhere he went. His hands were itchy and dry from peeling off his gloves to write. He wished they had smarter people than him to work out whether the survivors would fall to freezing, starvation, or suffocation first. Was it safe burning fires for warmth when there was no wind to carry the smoke away?

A lamp would’ve announced Angus’s presence and given Davenport enough forewarning to slink off. Angus groped blindly along the wall, heading for the stack of empty crates he knew would make a convenient place to sit. Angus had to hand it to him—almost no one else at the BoB had darkvision, so this was a pretty good way to avoid interruptions! He heard Davenport freeze when he got close. Once Angus was sure he had Davenport’s attention he let himself trip and crumple to the ground. He made sure to fall on his left side so he wouldn’t damage anything in his bag.

Davenport sighed heavily. The tin clacked down on wood. “You okay, Angus?” he called.

Angus pretended to startle. “I’m fine, sir! Where are you?”

He felt hands at his elbow. Davenport pulled him to his feet. “You shouldn’t be out here without a lamp. What were you thinking?”

“Sorry sir,” Angus said, lip wobbling. He let his exhaustion show on his face. “I just wanted to be somewhere quiet for a second.”

“You and me both,” Davenport said. “Well, I guess our break’s over.” He started leading Angus back towards the light spilling out of the warehouse door.

“Wait, sir?” Angus asked. He wished he could see Davenport’s face for this conversation. Adults don’t like to listen to little kids. Changing their minds without putting them on the defensive required a delicate balancing act. And Davenport trusted Lucretia implicitly. “You know magic, right?”

“A little,” Davenport said. “What was useful to me.”

“Can magic stop us from freezing to death, sir?” Angus asked. Davenport’s fingers tightened on his elbow.

“Maybe, Angus,” Davenport said carefully. Angus could see a dim outline now, Davenport a head shorter than him. He seemed uncomfortably stiff.

“Would Mr. Jenkins know?” Angus asked. He focused on relaxing his posture. “I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t find him earlier.”

“But you were able to find _me?_ The man does have to sleep sometime, Angus. You probably should too.”

“I don’t think he’s here, sir,” Angus said. “I saw him and Ms. Lucretia leave for somewhere. But it’s been hours.”

“Did they take Carey and Killian with them?”

“Yes, sir, and Lucas,” Angus said. They were almost at the door now, close enough to hear Davenport’s men talking inside. He wriggled his elbow free of Davenport’s grip. “But I was worried—”

“What’s this really about, Angus?” Davenport crossed his arms sternly. Angus could barely make out his features. It wasn’t _fair_ , Davenport could see every time his composure slipped. Angus could only see Davenport’s reflective eyes, narrowed and fixed on him.

“I—I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

“You came to find me because you had something on your mind. I don’t appreciate dishonesty, Angus.”

Angus teared up. Stupid of him. Everyone else was tired and hungry too! None of the adults were crying, and they wouldn’t respect him if he did. He didn’t want to cry in front of the Captain, why couldn’t he make himself stop?

“I’m—I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “I’m just—it’s suspicious, that somehow all the other wizards are dead, except for Jenkins.”

“ _Angus_ ,” Davenport said sternly. He took a deep breath and continued in a much softer voice, “Everyone here has been through a lot. And we’re not nearly out of the woods yet. Lucretia’s an adult, and so’re Carey and Killian. It’s not your job to worry about them.”

“But sir—Jenkins said, said that he was Professor Miller’s assistant,” and Angus knew he was babbling now, frantic and crumbling, but he had to get this out, Davenport _had_ to understand. “And—and he said he was an expert, but he doesn’t sound like—”

“I know he lied about his achievements, Angus,” Davenport said. “You’re not the only person with a brain.”

The voices inside the warehouse were quiet now. They probably had eavesdroppers. Angus swallowed thickly and tried to keep his voice level. “But so why did Ms. Lucretia trust him?”

Davenport huffed. “You don’t have to trust someone to work with them,” he said. “You look dead on your feet. Go to bed.”

“But sir—what if—what if this has something to do with the barrier?”

“Angus, I don’t know where you’re going with this. I agreed that Jenkins isn’t as competent as he makes himself out to be. I’m not going to leap from there to thinking he had anything to do with all _this_ ,” Davenport said, making a sweeping gesture at the barrier overhead. “The kind of power that could cause this? That’s beyond any of our comprehension.”

“What’s the plan, sir?” Angus said, voice cracking under his desperation. “What can we do to get out?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Davenport snapped. “Lucretia and I, and Bain—everyone else—we’re working on it.”

“I’ve been investigating. A lot of necromancy uses sacrifices, and of course the zombies were murdered people,” Angus said. “So if anyone’s behind this—someone’s got to be behind this—they’d want to attack the survivors, and, and…”

“We _know_ ,” Davenport said. “We’re arming everyone who can carry a weapon. We’ve got guards sleeping in shifts. _You_ need to sleep.”

“When did you last sleep, sir?” Angus challenged, standing up as straight as he could. He was used to doing this to look older for adults. It didn’t immediately occur to him that looming over a gnome—even just by a head—was rude. And Davenport wasn’t inclined to tolerate pushiness.

“Bed, _now_ ,” Davenport snapped. “Captain’s orders. And give me my notes.”

Angus pulled the logbook and pen out of his bag. He hesitated, but had no choice but to hand it over when one of the stevedores poked his head out the door to call for Captain Davenport. The man stuck around to escort Angus to one of the dorms.

He didn’t sleep. He didn’t approach Captain Davenport again either. Not even after Lucretia slunk back without Killian.

“I’m writing it down right now, Angus,” she said, when he ambushed her in her office and asked what he should tell Captain Davenport about her trip. He would’ve believed her, if not for the frantic, wide-eyed look she shot him. “Killian will be back soon. She’s with Captain Bain.”

“Do you want me to take your report to Captain Davenport?” Angus asked.

“I’m not nearly done with it,” she said, yanking her journal closer to her chest. “In all honesty, we didn’t accomplish much.”

They’d found the necromancer, though—Barry Bluejeans. Taken him into custody, according to Lucretia’s farspeech conversation with Captain Bain. _That_ was news, and Angus had to find out by spying through the tarp around her desk. In the following days she kept him busy running messages. Fewer and fewer messages to Captain Davenport; Angus barely had a chance to look at his logbook again.

Angus guessed he was probably demoted from assistant to courier. He didn’t want to ask Davenport. Just the thought of talking to him made Angus’s stomach clench with anxiety. He hated that he’d cried, hated that he _always_ felt like crying now. It wasn’t a big deal, so long as he could still work. But he wished he could sleep.

Lucretia didn’t mention Master Bluejeans to Davenport at all. She was also working on something secret with Lucas, and wasn’t _that_ alarming. Lucas was a brat and a _jerk_. On top of all that, Jenkins suddenly had a lot of books he wouldn’t let Angus see. He claimed that he was researching the barrier and that a little boy would be of no use to him. In Angus’s estimation _he_ was useless. He shot down every idea anyone had about escaping and never contributed anything constructive. _Avi_ was doing more to figure out the barrier and all his plans were booze-inspired. Jenkins was supposed to at least be their wizard, but he came up with endless excuses to not cast spells. He wouldn’t teach Angus cantrips, not even when Angus already had his own wand.  No one wanted to give Angus a chance with anything except busy work.

Davenport withdrew into himself. He never had a spare word for anyone. He stopped sneaking away for meals, but only because he didn’t take breaks. He bolted down crackers and mugs of stew rushing between meetings and trimmed his mustache unevenly. He’d thank Angus for bringing messages, but he’d turn back to the other adults in the same breath.

Hopefully Angus’s investigations would lead him to someone he could share his findings with. There was no way he was stopping, no matter how thin he was stretched. He was still a great detective even though he hadn’t taken a case in months. It was hard establishing a new network after moving. And the first thing he learned about Westgate was that it was a dangerous place to be a truth-seeker. The other council families used their power to inflate their own wealth, heedless of even the letter of the law. The guard mostly existed to protect their business interests. Angus had anticipated months spent getting the lay of the land before he could get back to work.

Thieves and murderers didn’t scare Angus. He had experience from back when he lived on his parents’ country estate. For his last case he’d helped the local militia track down a band of highwaymen. They’d been slaughtering caravans that passed between the farming villages and melting away into the forest. Angus identified the man buying supplies for them and followed him to their camp site. Then he came back with the militia.

He missed how simple that had been. The villagers threw him a party after the hangings. But his steward had been extremely alarmed by the whole thing. Within months the estate—the home that had been his parents’, the only place he’d ever lived—was up for sale and Angus was shipped off to his grandfather. And now he was in more danger than ever.

So it didn’t seem like a big deal to him to pay a visit to the garrison. The whole route was well within the safe zone. Some parts of it were even lit, and there were plenty of people around. He didn’t even really have to sneak. No one was in charge of him! Just to be safe, though, he let Johann see him ‘napping’ in his bedroll and then headed out when the coast was clear. He didn’t care to know whether Lucretia or Davenport would come up with a reason to stop him.

If it was suspicious that Jenkins showed up as the only surviving wizard, then it was doubly so that Captain Bain now had command of the guard. Angus had heard from Killian that he was supposed to have been at the palace when it was destroyed. Only a last-minute duty change had saved him, and the officers Angus could’ve asked about that were dead.

Lucretia’d had almost a week to report arresting the necromancer to Davenport. She’d stopped talking to him over farspeech, but that just made Angus worry that they might have a secret method of communication. He knew there were wizard spells for sending messages. Angus needed to see what was going on for himself.

When he arrived, he found that most of the families sheltering at the garrison were asleep. He hid behind the building and waited for breakfast to be served. Angus popped his coat collar up around his face and pulled his hat down so he wouldn’t be recognized. At breakfast he was too nervous to eat more than a few spoonfuls of beans. It’d been a mistake to try and sit with other unattended kids. Angus had no idea how to deal with them. They kept talking to him when he was trying to focus on figuring out where the jail was.

He got dragged into a game of tag and skinned a knee before the kids would leave him alone. They weren’t even good as a cover if they wouldn’t stop distracting him from his mission! He avoided them through lunch, hunkering down against a wall where he could watch the doors that only guards used.

Captain Bain’s office was obvious. He was in an out about once an hour. He had trained officers to delegate to and didn’t have to be as hands-on as Captain Davenport. Angus kept a sharp eye on his movements and identified the halls that led to the barracks and the armory. This was taking too long; someone was bound to have noticed that Angus was missing by now. Angus wished he could’ve been given a message to deliver to the garrison. Or that he had Bane’s farspeech frequency—assuming that he would’ve cooperated with his questions.

Eventually he was too sleepy to care about being caught. He started just…opening doors. He found the kitchen and two storerooms before he had to use the excuse that he was looking for a bathroom. He memorized the face of the kind guard that escorted him—another person to avoid later.

On his way back from the privy he noticed extra guards heading up to patrol the top of the barricade, attended by runners with arrows and ammunition. He shoved his fingers in his ears and fled back into the garrison. He didn’t need to hear the zombies. He’d never forget what they sounded like.

It was quieter inside now. A hush had fallen over the survivors. Angus sat down at a table facing Captain Bain’s office, blearily determined to wait. For something. A lead. His stone of farspeech rung—Lucretia was looking for him. He muted it and settled in. Too late to go back now.

He woke up to pounding boots. People were rushing to shove their things into bags. Angus slid off the bench and crouched under the table. A lieutenant threw open the door to Captain Bain’s office. She was shocked to find it empty. Angus cursed himself for dozing.

He sat paralyzed while everyone else scrambled to find their families. It was too loud. Dozens of people shouting. Angus drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face. He didn’t look around until after the guards hustled everyone out the door and the garrison quieted. Angus stayed hidden until they ran off towards the barracks, calling for their captain. Killian burst in through the doors just as he was about to stand up. He ducked back under the table and watched her rush off towards the armory.

They were being evacuated. They were being _overrun_ , and Bain was _missing_. This was his last chance to gather evidence.

He had to pick one thing to check and get out. There wasn’t time to go through Bain’s documents, and his office wasn’t private anyway. The other guards would’ve seen anything obviously suspicious. Angus made the snap decision to find what he’d originally come for—the jail and the necromancer. Lucretia was keeping secrets, and if Angus figured out what then he could talk to Davenport.

No one stopped him from flinging open doors. He could hear guards calling for Bain and a building roar outside. There was a lamp left that the evacuees hadn’t taken. Angus grabbed it instead of digging his out.

He took a chance and headed down the hallway towards the armory. Worst-case scenario: Killian caught him and carried him to safety, the BoB fired him for disappearing for so long with nothing to show for his efforts. He knew he’d made the right choice when he tried a door and found a staircase heading down.

He crossed his fingers for a few minutes of conversation with Master Bluejeans before the guards finished clearing people out of the garrison. Halfway down the stairs he heard voices and realized someone else had beat him to it.

Angus recognized Bain’s uniform but not his voice. He recognized Bluejeans’s voice, though—rough like he swallowed gravel, made rougher by his time in jail. Angus turned off his lamp and inched silently down the staircase.

“That was—what about me made you think I’d take that offer?” Bluejeans was saying. “I mean, besides the general—uh, necromancy.”

“You’d rather die with everyone else here, then?” Captain Bain said. Angus froze. “We don’t need you, Barry. You need us.”

The jail was a dug-out basement. Crumbling limestone blocks laid down decades ago. Mildew and damp along the exterior wall, tiny windows facing the street set high and flickering with orange light. There must be a fire outside. Was the barricade burning? Bluejeans was seated on the bunk in the only occupied cell. Bain stood in the open door, leaning against an iron bar. His hand was at the sword on his hip. Bluejeans fidgeted with a tray in his lap. He glanced nervously between his meal and Bain.

“You’re not the slightest bit interested in what you could learn?” Bain asked. “No one else here wants you, Bluejeans. This city has no future, you don’t have family to look out for—what’s there to hold you back?”

Barry opened his mouth and coughed dryly. He gulped from the cup on his tray and wet his lips. “Well—me,” he said, finally. “I’m not down to kill folks. I don’t know—I can’t imagine what you—a, a guard captain—were promised to get you on board. Who’s your boss, Bain?”

“So there’s nothing I could offer to convince you?” Bain asked.

“N-no,” Barry stuttered, coughing again. He massaged his throat.

Bain’s back was to Angus, but it sounded like he was smiling. “Not even an antidote to the poison you just drank?”

Barry’s eyes went wide. He dumped the tray off his lap and folded forward, gagging. “That’s alright,” Bain said, turning away. “I don’t have one anyway. See you in hell.”

Angus scrambled back up the stairs, almost knocking over the lantern. He couldn’t grab it, couldn’t risk a light. He slipped on an uneven step, skinned knee stinging against his trousers. He heard a chuckle behind him.

“Lost, kid?” Bain asked. Angus didn’t dare turn. He was almost to the door when Bain’s hand snagged him by the coat collar. Angus wriggled, arms trapped in his sleeves.

“They’re looking for you!” Angus squeaked. “The other guards—they’ll be here any minute!”

“Such loyalty,” Bain said, spinning Angus to face him. “But clearly they’ve forgotten their training, if they’re setting aside the zombies.”

“You have to turn yourself in, sir!” Angus said. “You’ll be killed too!”

Bain laughed. “No, I won’t.” Then he pitched Angus backwards and shoved him down the stairs.

Every stone step dug into him, bruising through his coat. His kicking feet knocked the abandoned lantern off the steps to shatter somewhere below. The bag tangled around his shoulders and he caught himself on stinging palms. Bain idly descended after him. Half of Angus’s things spilled down the steps. He dug through his bag for a weapon and came up with the wand he didn’t know how to use. Bain tugged it out of his hand and tossed it away into the darkness.

Bain’s eyes flashed with reflected firelight from the windows. That shouldn’t—wasn’t Bain human? Angus didn’t have a chance to consider the implications. Impossibly strong hands tightened around his neck and yanked him off his feet. His blood rushed in his ears. He strained to draw a breath, clawing at Bain’s wrists. Angus brought a knee up into Bain’s face and something sharp pierced his skin. He caught a watery glimpse of Bain’s jaw distended and gaping like a snake’s, fangs flashing in the dim light. Angus kicked futilely at his chest and felt blood smear against his trousers.

Phantom lights danced in his vision. He went limp, dimly hoping to conserve air. He couldn’t—he couldn’t think. Battered and helpless, he struggled for awareness against the dizziness consuming his thoughts. His lungs heaved in his chest, bursting with overwhelming pain.

Something jarred and shook his whole body. Angus hit the ground before he realized Bain released him, shocked into taking a gasping breath. He gulped air frantically and rolled away.

Barry was pressed up against Bain’s back. Bain’s hands scrabbled at something in his chest. They wrestled, Bain writhing against his grip. A muffled splintering resounded and Angus spotted the tip of his discarded wand poking out of Bain’s jerkin, impaled through his heart from behind. He spluttered, fetid liquid oozing from his mouth, and Barry forced him to his knees.

The room stilled. Shouts and twanging crossbows sounded from outside. Barry was the first to move, shoving Bain’s body away with shaking arms. “Hey—kid—you okay?” he asked. He glanced at the fragment of wood in his clenched fist and let it drop.

Barry looked fine. He looked human in a way that Bain hadn’t, especially now that his corpse was crumbling to ash on the floor. But he shouldn’t— _couldn’t_ be alive. “You were poisoned!” Angus burst out.

“Yeah buddy, I uh—I think I know what this is,” Barry said. He raised his palms in front of him and shuffled towards Angus cautiously. “Are you—are you hurt? Did he bite you?”

“He was a vampire,” Angus said, slowly, shifting so the wound on his knee was hidden against the floor. “I’ve read about them.”

“You’re bleeding,” Barry said. Angus was up in a flash, scrambling away. “No—kid, it’s okay, you’re not gonna turn or anything. They don’t work that way. Just uh, let me see where he got you?”

“I’m perfectly capable of performing first aid, sir, had we the supplies,” Angus said. “What are you?” He was proud of how steady his voice sounded.

Barry flexed his hands and stared down at them. He wiped the corner of his mouth and made a face like he was going to be sick. “I don’t know if it matters,” he said. “Kid, you gotta get out of here. Go find a real guard.”

The battle outside was drawing closer to the garrison. Angus could almost make out what people were shouting. “What about you, sir?”

Barry swallowed. “I, uh—I’m already dead.”

“ _And?_ ”

“Typically when—when the Raven Queen raises a revenant, they only stick around until they get revenge. And, well—I, I got him.” He looked up from his hands and finally met Angus’s eyes, offering a rueful smile. “Glad you’re okay.”

Angus rose to his feet with shaking legs. He wobbled over to the steps, staring down at everything that’d been in his bag. All the supplies he’d thought were important. The journal he’d been keeping—he had a flash of frustration, of anger at himself for his stupid, _petty_ attempts to play detective—before he shook himself and picked it up. He stuffed everything in reach back in his bag and lit the lamp he'd held in reserve.

Under the light he could see that Barry’s skin was ashen. His eyes were dry and dull behind broken glasses. He watched the window, wincing at the clamor outside, then turned back to Angus.

Angus had read about revenants. Not much more than what Barry said. They were mostly like the people they’d been in life—unless you were their prey. They relentlessly hunted their killer down and then the Raven Queen recalled their soul, leaving the empty husk of their corpse to wither. A popular trope in the kind of grisly tales of magic and murder that stores hesitated to sell him. Angus loved _Caleb Cleveland_ and other more age-appropriate books too, of course, but he wasn’t going to restrict himself. More information was always better.

“Can you make it up the stairs?” Barry asked. “You’re shaking.”

The concern in his voice almost made Angus crumple. He nodded and gulped, nose clogging. He squeezed his eyes shut against prickling tears and listened to Barry’s careful approach.

Barry put a gentle hand on his shoulder and Angus fell into his arms with a sob, digging the lamp into Barry’s stomach. Barry patted his back awkwardly and folded his coat collar into place. Angus couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a hug. He wondered if he would’ve heard a heartbeat, had Barry been alive.

“We’re gonna be okay,” Barry said. “I’m uh, pretty strong now—I could carry you? If I fall over just, well, get away from the body. In case it goes zombie.”

“You told Ms. Lucretia there was a spell for that,” Angus mumbled into Barry’s shirt. He actually smelled kind of gross. Not like rot—not yet at least—but like sweat and body odor. “Gentle Repose.”

Barry startled. “Holy shi—sorry. Yeah, uh, that was me. Glad she listened. Can I pick you up?”

Angus nodded. He cradled his bag and the lantern against his stomach and let Barry hook an arm under his knees. Exhaustion hit him like a leaden weight. But his heart was still racing and he was _painfully_ conscious, head pounding with it. “You can swear in front of me, sir,” he said. “And I know who you are. I’m Angus McDonald.” He hesitated, feeling foolish, before whispering, _“The world’s greatest detective,”_ a beat later.

“You don’t uh, sound real sure about that,” Barry said, staggering to his feet. Angus shifted awkwardly.

They made it back into the hallway before Angus fidgeted in Barry’s arms and pulled himself up to sitting so he could look around. Being carried was uncomfortable. And Barry obviously hadn’t carried a kid before, but at least he was gracious about having his shoulders yanked and stomach kneed.

“I was a pretty good wizard,” Barry said. It took a moment for Angus to remember the thread of the conversation. “When Bain—back there, I tried to cast some spells? That was my first plan. But it’s, it’s pretty common for revenants to—lose magic. And I was a necromancer. Raven Queen’s not a fan. So, nothing. Couldn’t even do a cantrip.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Angus said. They passed back into the main hall of the garrison.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is—we’re still alright,” Barry said. “We’ll get out of this, and you’ll uh, go on to do more detective-ing.”

“I really screwed up,” Angus said, acutely aware of the throbbing bruises around his throat and down his back.

“You’re gonna be fine. I can’t make that a promise, but—being still around is what matters.”

They sized up the heavy door of the garrison. There was no sign of anyone else left inside, but it wouldn’t be locked. There was no point. The roar of fire almost drowned out the thwack of steel and pounding of boots beyond the door. Angus heard a man’s voice call for retreat.

Barry shouldered the door open. Angus struggled to make sense of what was on the other side—dozens of soldiers, some in BoB uniforms. Heaps of twisted bodies so thick that the street wasn’t visible under them. Plumes of smoke rising to the sky from the demolished barricade. A nexus of unnatural, dawn-tinted flame at the center, devouring the approaching zombies.

And a black column of darkness, a shadow where there should be empty air, that _spoke_. Barry and Angus froze, trying to make sense of the shadow-being between them and escape.

Corporal Killian spotted them. “The necromancer! He’s got a hostage!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay I figured out how I wanted to write Angus.
> 
> Barry has now died in every single TAZ thing I've written. this is how you can tell he's my favorite.


	9. Second guesses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merle tries to deescalate a fight. Magnus rushes in.

Magnus, with his goddess-given lance, was a hero. Merle, waddling into the fight late and winded from the effort, felt like a joke. He left his hammer hanging from his belt—what good would it do him when he couldn’t reach the zombies’ skulls? He fumbled with his spell cards and damn near dropped them when the column of looming shadow spoke.

It was saying something about parties. “What the hell!” Merle shouted over it.

“Excuse me?” the shadow said, halting. Magnus readied his axe.

Merle waved his arms. “Hey, hey, hold up! Time out for a second. What are _you_ supposed to be?”

He could almost make out the edges of the shadow. It was kind of like a talking bath curtain someone had let mold over. The thing had a central figure that towered above Merle but really wasn’t that much larger than Killian. Black stuff spread from it and clung to the ground and garrison, blending seamlessly with real shadows. The edges Merle could see were indistinct and misty. It didn’t seem to notice Magnus prodding them with his boot.

“The name’s Kravitz,” the shadow-thing said, in an awkward, grating inflection. Was he doing a fake accent? “Charmed.”

Killian had her crossbow ready, obviously lining up a shot on whatever in the shadows looked most solid. Then the garrison doors behind them opened to reveal a pudgy man carrying a small boy. Dammit! Something like dozens of humans had passed Merle on the street—he’d thought the civilians were all safely evacuated.

“The necromancer!” Killian said, turning her crossbow on him. “He’s got a hostage!”

The necromancer flinched back. “I’m not a hostage!” the kid said. Merle was inclined to believe him. He and Magnus had been in town for all of thirty minutes before things went to shit. These BoB-types were a wreck; they couldn’t protect one little garrison from zombies, or even just evacuate all the civilians?

And he was depending on them to have kept his kids and Hekuba safe. Who was the biggest idiot, here?

“Angus!” Carey shouted, elbowing her way through the crowd of guards. They obviously had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. At least the zombies weren’t an issue for the moment. Merle hoped the fire holding them off wasn’t dying down just yet. The flames wavered and flickered erratically, rolling back and forth on the pavement like waves on the ocean. Approaching zombies were consumed with a whistling roar underscored by eerie echoes. Merle was a good few meters away and at the back of the crowd to boot, but it still struck him as odd that he couldn’t feel heat coming off the fire until it flared up to consume a zombie.

“Are we all quite done screwing around? I’ve got work to do,” Kravitz shouted over the din, voice reverberating down to Merle’s bones. The noise was some kind of magic for sure—didn’t sound like it was coming from anything like a throat. Half of everything going on here was some kind of magic, and Merle didn’t have the faintest clue how to deal with that.

But he knew how to talk to people. “I’m Merle Highchurch!”

“What.” Hard to read the body language of something without arms or a face, but the curtain folds slumped a bit. That meant he had the thing’s attention.

Merle cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted. “My name! I thought we were doing introductions. Don’t be an ass.” Killian mouthed something incredulous at him. Merle elected to ignore her.

“Merlllllle fuckin’ Highchurch. Here’s an idea for you: could you and all your little friends lay off the—admittedly gross—zombies, and head out?”

The guards shuffled in place, confused and casting wary glances towards the fire and zombies. Magnus hefted his axe. “Now hang on!” he said. “Are these _your_ zombies?”

“I’m really more like a babysitter. Look, there’s no reason for you all to die violently. I don’t have a problem with you guys—”

Magnus forced a harsh laugh and gestured to the barrier overhead. “I’d say you do!” Several of the guards muttered affirmations.

“Yeah, you’ve kinda gone and killed half the city!” Carey said, planting her feet at Magnus’s side. A scaly frill around her neck flared out.

All this posturing was gonna escalate tensions—Merle raised his hands and elbowed Magnus in the hip, but he didn’t get the idea. Kravitz drew himself up above Magnus and Carey’s heads. “Look, let’s not play it this way. I’ve had a rough couple of days tracking this soul down. Now I’ve got a job to do here. Trust me, you should take the opportunity to _leave_.”

Magnus brought his axe down on the shadow’s bulk. Kravitz receded, tendrils of shadow skittering away. Even with Merle’s darkvision the movement was disorienting, almost impossible to track. Magnus didn’t have a chance. A lash of shadow whipped up and cracked him across the face. He reeled and collided with Carey as she lunged forward and they both went down in a pile of limbs. Killian fired three bolts in quick succession, to no effect: two of them passed clean through Kravitz and out the other side.

Several of the guards fired crossbows on Kravitz or hacked at the shadows around their feet. It was impossible to tell whether they were doing any damage besides blunting their blades on the cobblestones. Tendrils of shadows roiled and looped around their ankles. Merle winced as guards in garrison and BoB uniforms toppled into each other, swords flailing. He backed up against the garrison wall next to the necromancer and clutched his bible to his chest.

He wasn’t the dwarf for this job. He wasn’t the dwarf for _any_ job. The path that led him here was a series of selfish decisions and missteps. When he turned his back on his wife and kids—and hadn’t that been a coward’s move, leaving without a word, without even divorcing Hekuba properly—he’d come up with all kinds of justifications. Hekuba was the better parent and the moneymaker. Merle’s calling was the open road and the word of Pan. He’d told himself he was going to spread the faith, do some good, make some coin.

Years later and Merle hadn’t converted a single person. He hadn’t even gotten better as a mercenary—he tossed out the occasional heal, sure, but he felt like he seldom pulled his own weight. The pittance he scraped together for child support was a bare fraction of Hekuba’s salary. After how long he’d been gone, he and his kids might as well be strangers to each other. He didn’t know a thing about them—not even that they were presently in danger. They could be dead.

Kravitz layered shadows over the prone guards and pinned them to the cobbled street. He advanced on the rosy flames holding the zombies back. Shadows crawled up Killian and coiled around her shoulders. She dropped her crossbow to wrestle with them, forced to her knees. Only Merle and the necromancer were left standing.

“Merle!” Carey shouted. “Do something!”

No chance to read his spell cards. Merle panicked and sent a small lick of sacred flame at the central pillar of shadow. It was a simple cantrip, but it cut through the black with a fizzling glow that burnt like coal before dying down.

“Ow,” Kravitz said. The column rotated. “A cleric, huh?” A dark patch by Merle’s feet that he hadn’t even realized was part of Kravitz grabbed him around his knees and catapulted him away from the garrison wall.

His bible and spell cards were torn from his hands. He arced through the air screaming and hit the ground rolling amidst thick shadows, clear on the other side of the guards. When he finally caught himself on bruised elbows he looked up to see Kravitz wading into the fire. Sprays of embers struck the shadows and vanished. The flames retreated haphazardly, liquid strands of pink and red lashing out before being consumed. The light dimmed as it was siphoned away—first Merle made out the shapes of zombies writhing in the flames, and then one staggered out in front of him.

 The fire leapt up around the zombies still in its midst, sending gouts of hot air rolling outwards and scorching the back of the zombie approaching Merle. Flames wavered back and then redoubled, crashing into Kravitz and breaking around him.

“Boy, you’re not intimidated by me at all, are you,” he said. Light flashed across him in response. For a moment Merle could see two figures; a column draped in folds of shadow, and a burning coil of white light deep in the flames. “I can’t allow you to stay out here. You’ve been causing a lot of problems.”

 Merle remembered the zombie just in time. His warhammer was digging into his gut under him—he shoved himself up and yanked it out of his belt. The zombie lunged for him. He didn’t have a chance to draw his hammer back for a full strike. He brought it into the zombie’s temple with a squishy thud, but the zombie closed charred, flaking hands around his arm. Merle flailed with the hammer, battering the zombie before it sunk teeth into his exposed wrist. His bones cracked in its jaw with nauseating pain, furrowed strips of skin oozing blood.

“Pan dammit!” Merle shouted. Magnus’s lance struck over his shoulder and drove into the zombie’s face. Still weighed down by shadows, he shoved the zombie off Merle and shook his lance free with an appalling squelch.

“Let me chop it off!” Magnus shouted.

Merle couldn’t grip his hammer. It dropped from his hand and he cradled his broken wrist against his chest. “Don’t chop me off!” He was in enough pain already!

“Merle, you’re zombifying! Let me chop it off!”

Shit. Merle shouldn’t even be here. Why’d he ever think Pan was taking an interest in his life? He wasn’t gonna save Merle’s family for him. Merle had been an idiot to believe he had any role beyond delivering Magnus.

“Let me chop it off!” Magnus shouted again, axe in hand.

Merle squeezed his eyes shut and extended his wrist. “Chop the damn thing off! Just chop it off! I don’t care!” The strike came down above his elbow and he fainted.

 

The next thing Merle realized was that his head was lolling off the side of Magnus’s lap. He scrambled to focus his senses. His arm seethed with pain that throbbed all the way up to the wooziness swelling under his brow. Something bit sharply into his stump—Carey was at his side, tightening a hemp cord into a makeshift tourniquet. What was left of his arm was absolutely, _nauseatingly_ gushing blood. Killian was shouting. Even Kravitz was shouting. “What the fuck! Freeze! All of you lot, _freeze!_ ”

“Shit!” Merle said. “You dirty prick, I can’t believe you did this to me!”

“I was saving your damn life!” Magnus protested.

“Oh the pain, kill me!”

“You cut his fucking arm off!” Killian shouted. The crossbow was back in her hands, the only shadows left clinging to her barely brushing her legs. A bunch of the other guards were scrambling to their feet and retreating, heading around the corner of the garrison and towards the docks. It looked like Kravitz had recoiled and pulled all his shadows inwards. He was feinting around the bright heart of the fire, gingerly corralling the few remaining licks of flame. The street was much darker now. The zombies slumped in place, keen eyes following everyone’s movement above gnashing jaws.

“Shit, he—he’s a cleric, right? He can heal? Because you did—didn’t—you really screwed up that tourniquet,” an unfamiliar, gravelly voice said. “I’ve got his book.” Merle turned his head to see the necromancer approaching with the boy at his side. Killian trained her crossbow on him.

“Don’t shoot Mr. Bluejeans,” the boy said testily. The hell was a kid doing in a warzone anyway? Little shit seemed unfazed by the blood.

Killian opened her mouth to protest and Kravitz cut her off. “Barry, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“See!” Killian shouted. “Angus, what the fu— _hell_ are you doing here? That’s a bad guy!”

“I don’t—I don’t know him!” Barry said. Carey drew a dagger and hopped to her feet. Barry panicked, lobbed the bible at her, and backed up several paces. She caught it reflexively and tossed it to the ground next to Merle, spell cards cascading loose.

Merle’s stump felt like it was jammed full of needles. He could hardly process the drama going on around him, much less cast any healing on himself.  He was willing to blame these dumb kids for some of his misfortune now. He may’ve gotten in over his head with the zombies, but at least he hadn’t cut his own damn arm off. The rough strands of the hemp tourniquets were soaked through with blood. His stump gushed steadily. “I’m bleeding out over here,” he slurred. “Bleed-bleed-bleed-bleed-bleed. Pan, _whyyyyyy_.”

The tourniquet itched. Distinct sensations crawled from the haze of pain. Heat swelled up to his shoulder and down past where his elbow used to be, sweeping away some of the fuzziness in his head. Something brushed against his sleeve. Magnus made inarticulate noises of shock and stared with Merle at the long leaves blooming from the hemp strands. The tourniquet thickened and twisted like spreading roots, years of growth condensed into seconds. Wood spiraled and thickened: spongy roots hardened to branches and shot down to form a rough hand. In his shock Merle balled his new fist and felt the pressure through craggy bark. The bleeding stopped entirely.

It still hurt a ton. Manageably, though—Merle’d had worse. And something was digging into his chin—he ran his good hand through his beard and found a spell card stuck in it.

“That was so fucking cool!” Magnus said giddily. “Holy shit, Pan’s awesome!”

Merle grinned and rolled to his feet. “That’s Pan for you. Best god there is.” Closing the new fingers around his warhammer took a couple tries. He couldn’t feel much with the hand, and it was short a finger, but his grip seemed strong enough. “Still can’t believe you cut my freaking arm off.”

“I was saving your life!”

“Uh—actually?” Barry said. “Not—usually, a caster just, just raises bodies. Zombies don’t usually spread by biting, that’s, that’s this whole extra thing.”

Magnus let out a quiet _oops_. Merle whirled on him. “You mean this guy got chop-happy with my arm for _no freaking reason?!_ ”

“Hang on, sirs—” Angus said. “Mr. Kravitz?”

Everyone froze. They’d been keeping a wary eye on the shadows and zombies—well, Killian and Carey and the remaining guards had. Merle didn’t have a clue how they were gonna deal if Kravitz decided to attack again, and he bet no one else did either. “Dammit, kid,” he whispered. “Don’t get his attention!”

Kravitz was ignoring them, concentrating on his tug-of-war with the magic fire. He now had his frozen zombies buffered by black shadows to protect them from the flames. A good couple dozen of them were left. The fire took shots at the zombies and Kravitz, erratic flares spurting impotently. The massive waves of light had been reduced to a single long wick encaged by folding black. It buzzed with choppy static, far softer than the earlier roar.

“Why are you idiots still here?” Kravitz said. “Don’t you know a lucky break when you see one?”

Merle looked from his warhammer to his remaining spell card, trying to decide whether he should risk grabbing for his bible and the rest. He should’ve probably memorized his spells, but he hadn’t had a head for that kind of thing even when he was a younger dwarf.

“You could have chosen to kill us and didn’t,” Angus said, adjusting his glasses. Everything from his dapper little shoes to his fancy hat read as ‘nerdy know-it-all’ to Merle. Kid didn’t have the sense to shut up—where was the adult supposed to be in charge of him? “What’s your real objective, Mr. Kravitz?”

“I was specifically told to keep as many zombies intact as possible. The—let’s say _attrition rate_ —has been unacceptably high, and the culprit ‘needs dealt with’.”

“That’s—” Barry spoke up and everyone turned their attention to him. He took a beat to swallow his nervousness. “You’ve got a, a vengeful kind of spirit there? Arcanic spirits don’t happen by accident, but I’d—I’d still be surprised if this is the first ghost you’ve got, you know, haunting you. Statistically speaking, with how many people who died—”

“I didn’t ask for your expert opinion,” Kravitz said. “I tried to prevent this, even when I had _no idea_ what a headache she would become.”

“Wait, hold up,” Killian said. “The fire’s a magic zombie-killing ghost?”

“More—more or less—” Barry said. “What I’m wondering is—is, you’re consuming arcanic energy anyway. So why haven’t you just, destroyed it?”

Kravitz bristled and let his fake accent slip. “Thanks for your input, but I would _never_. That’s the most vile crime I can think of.”

“Is anyone else surprised to hear that the zombie dude has morals?” Magnus said with a snort. “Just me?”

“Me too,” Carey said, raising a hand and turning to Killian. “And here’s what I’m thinking: baby, can we get that ghost?”

“Don’t even try it,” Kravitz said. “I’m not above letting zombies kill the lot of you.”

At this, the zombies lurched in place. Kravitz snapped back away from them. The spirit leapt out and incinerated the nearest one. The rest shuffled free of the shadows, advancing towards them. With so many of the guards fled, they were now badly outnumbered. Merle couldn’t blame them for saving their own hides, but c’mon.

Well, if everything was about to go tits up anyway—and Merle had Pan with him, felt his god’s presence more strongly than ever. His wooden arm hummed with divine magic, warm and comforting, and the spell card that’d ended up in his beard…he’d never cast it before. Never felt able. But Pan was the man with the plan, and Merle was his hands. And now Pan was maybe one of Merle’s hands? Whatever. “I think Pan’s got a bone to pick with you, buddy.”

Kravitz rotated to face him. Merle had to be honest—this guy scared the piss out of him. He hoped his spell hit hard. “I cast— _Guardian of Faith!_ ”

The spell worked exactly as described and came as easy as breathing. A massive, stately woman appeared out of nowhere, wielding a gleaming sword and a shield emblazoned with Pan’s pipes. She hovered above Kravitz’s field of shadows, glowing a luminous green that washed the black out to a dingy grey. She struck out at the nearest zombie and it disintegrated in one hit. Killian stepped protectively in front of Angus and shot the last of her bolts, taking down four more in quick succession. Carey got another in the eye with a thrown dagger.

“Meet Della Reese!” Merle crowed.

Kravitz sent a tendril surging towards him. Della brought her sword down in a flashing arc and the tendril severed and evaporated into black mist.

“Ow!” he said. “Okay, no more Mister-Nice—”

Magnus leapt at him lance-first. He drove the point into the bulky central column of shadow, dug his boots into the cobblestones beneath the spreading tendrils, and yanked hard. The tip of his lance sliced sideways and out with a cascade of black. He reversed his swing and chopped at the column. Kravitz swept to the side and Della slashed him again.

The ghost took the opportunity to escape Kravitz’s hold. It squeezed through the widening holes between the shadows, barely grazing them. It splashed against the nearest zombie. Instead of going up like a torch, the zombie smoldered and burned slowly.

“Sir, is the ghost disappearing?” Angus called to Barry, trying to sidestep Killian.

Barry took a deep breath and charged at the ghost. “Hey!” Killian shouted. “Don’t you go anywhere!”

“I know this is stupid!” he shouted over his shoulder. Merle lost sight of him behind a lunging zombie. He crushed its ribs with a two-handed strike and one of the guards finished it off with a sword.

Della and Magnus were a whirl of blades and muscle. Magnus’s divine lance sliced through shadow as easily as her sword. Kravitz, who’d shrugged off mundane and arcane attacks like they were nothing, couldn’t deal with them. He was shedding entire clouds of black mist now, the same consistency as the chunk of barrier Magnus had punched through. Merle hoped they were having fun. More fun than Barry, at least—two zombies swarmed him before he got to the ghost. He punched one in the face to absolutely no effect and they dug claws into his arms.

Merle cursed and charged the zombies down. He crushed one’s knee with his warhammer. Could he think of any spells off the top of his head? He wasn’t even sure he had enough energy to cast—he felt light-headed and woozy after running for only a second. He’d thrown around a lot of magic today and lost even more blood.

“Merle!” Killian shouted. “Get him back over here, we need him in custody!”

Barry managed to knock the zombie with the broken knee over. Merle crushed its skull as the second one bit down on Barry’s shoulder. He was flagging; the fingers on his flesh hand felt numb and freezing, and his heart rattled like he’d had eight cups of coffee. Barry pressed a palm to the zombie’s face and tried to shove it off. Merle watched in stupor as and the ghost flashed to them and raked across the zombie, singeing both its face and Barry’s hand.

“You gotta stop!” Barry said, frantic and pained.

Merle dodged around him to the zombie and tried to land a clean hit on its leg. “Is that how you thank an old man for savin’ your sorry hide from being eaten?” Merle dented the zombie’s thigh, but he couldn’t get a shot at its kneecap with the way it had Barry grappled.

“Dammit, Angus!” Killian shouted. That was all the warning Merle had before the kid appeared at his elbow. Kravitz dodged past Della and Magnus in the next second. Della scored one last hit against the shadows and disappeared in a flash of light. Magnus chased after Kravitz, the two blocking off the path Angus had taken through the melee.

“The hell are you doin’, kid?” Merle said. “Already got one unarmed moron over here! You guys should’ve stayed with Killeen.”

Barry managed to pry the zombie’s scorched jaw out of his shoulder. Merle couldn’t see any blood, or even a hole in his shirt. He’d have one hell of a bruise, but he’d be okay. So long as Magnus didn’t decide to amputate anything. “S—sorry,” Barry said, wincing. “Being in custody hasn’t, uh, been great to me.” The fire tore weakly at the zombie, raising blisters across its skin and a smell like burning garbage.

“Don’t you dare take off, Bluejeans!” Killian shouted. “You have _so much_ explaining to do!”

“I swear the zombies aren’t mine!” he shouted back. “I’ve got one gn— _gnawing_ on me, for gods’ sake! And I’m talking to the ghost! She—you—you’re burning yourself out!”

Killian headed for them and was blocked by a knot of zombies. She lopped at their necks, shouting between blows. “All I saw was you ran over there and suddenly the awesome-flame-ghost can’t light a napkin! If you want us to trust you then _get back here!_ ”

Kravitz tripped Magnus, but he just caught himself on his lance and sliced off another chunk of shadow. “To be fair, ma’am,” Angus called in a high, piping voice, “you haven’t given him many reasons to trust _you_.”

“I can’t believe we’re havin’ trust issues in the middle of being eaten,” Merle said. “You know what? I cast _Zone of Truth_.” It was all he had left in him; the one spell he knew off the top of his head, he realized.

The magic washed across the area, faintly tingling. Angus blinked. “I don’t think that had any effect on me.”

Merle rolled his eyes. “Well bully for you, kid. Hey, Barney—you evil?”

“No!” he said. “I mean—I really don’t think I am? What is ‘evil’, anyway?” He looked absorbed with the question, momentarily distracted from the flaming zombie plastered to his back. Some of his hair was smoking.

There was a squishy-sounding _crack_ and Magnus pitched towards them. He tripped and rolled smoothly to a crouch, managing to keep a grip on his lance. His nose was crooked and gushing blood down his front. He grinned ferally and staggered to his feet. The lance slid in his blood-slicked grip and his next swipes at Kravitz all missed. Kravitz scored another hit on his arm. Magnus almost dropped his lance, barely managing to get it up in time to block a blow to his neck.

Merle wasn’t used to be the only sane one. “Maggie! Don’t die! The hell are you tryna do here, Barney?”

Barry finally remembered to put effort into shrugging the zombie off. It slumped to the ground behind him. The ghostly flames clung to it all the way down, smoking like wet kindling. “Look—I, just, it’s the Raven Queen!” he said. Kravitz froze in place and Magnus finally managed to stick him again. “I think—I feel pretty uh, compelled? To check this out? Cuz, the thing is—this kind of spirit, with arcane energy f-fused—it’s not a natural thing. She’ll go ‘poof’ if she uses all her magic up. And then that’s the whole ballgame, for the soul.”

Merle couldn’t remember which goddess the Raven Queen was, but he supposed it didn’t matter. They had to finish Kravitz off and get back to the guards before reinforcements showed up. He and the kid and Barry had virtually no zombie-killing ability between them. Merle had already forgotten what kind of evil wizard Killian said Barry was, but if he was armed with a wand he would’ve used it when the zombie was gnawing on him.

At least Kravitz had taken enough heavy hits to reduce him to more of a flapping beach towel than an entire curtain. But Magnus was barely holding his own, and Merle was fresh out of magic. Hell, he was almost fresh out of blood. He couldn’t tell if his vision was fuzzy from blood loss or from the darkened street anymore. Here he was, spacing out in the middle of a melee and wool-gathering with his hammer limp at his side. It was all he could do to not drop it.

“Mr. Kravitz!” Angus called. “What entity—or entities—are responsible for the zombies and the barrier?”

“Nice try, but I don’t have to answer that!” Kravitz said, hitting Magnus in the side hard enough to make him double over.

“Did they kill this woman? Is that why she has a vendetta against their zombies?”

“Again, I don’t have to answer.” Kravitz faltered, though, wavering for a moment. Magnus wiped blood from his face and sucked in deep breaths. “But yes. She’d love to be able to hurt me too, I’m sure. I’m not out to kill her, though—well, not any deader than she already is.”

Angus hummed to himself. Merle had to admit that he was actually being pretty useful. He hadn’t expected that from a snack-sized kid who rushed into a pack of zombies. “Miss Ghost,” Angus said. “Can you hear me?”

The flames guttered around the downed zombie. Bits of it charred and peeled. But, instead of spreading, the flames coalesced. The edges of the fire rounded out and bent inwards unnaturally. Barry stooped down beside it, light reflecting from his cracked glasses.

The fading flames revealed the outline of a head and shoulders. The ghost drifted up and away from the zombie. She turned towards Angus, features blurred and mouth trembling. “ _…Yes,_ ” she whispered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's officially been a while! This AU's my favorite to play in. I've had the whole story outlined and roughed since March. But I prioritize works by what people seem to most enjoy, so while I'm not gonna drop this, it does end up on the backburner.


	10. Still burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup makes some new friends. They help her find her brother.

The impression of pain was all Lup knew for a small eternity. She felt too much and too little; no fingers, no sense of ever having had fingers, but sharp, furious electricity lancing from her edges to her core. No eyes to open or nose to breathe with, just a squeezing vice where her head should be, crushing her thoughts before they formed.

Taako was a spire of light and she reached for him, struggling against the implacable currents that bore her away. She lost him. He was entombed in the center of a soul-sucking vortex of fetid power, necromancy so dark that its afterimage left impressions of oily auroras across her not-eyes.

Her magic, honeyed gold and heavy with heat like lava, fed from her helpless rage. Molten red spooled out from her core to lash blindly at the night. Fire always came easiest to her, and that fire smoldered and caught and burned, burned, devoured her and the world that skated past, beyond the edges of her awareness.

At the end of that small eternity, something finally rose to her attention. An assemblage of that fetid power, dim fragments with deep cracks between them like broken glass. Reflexively, she reached out for a closer look—and suddenly she could _see_. A distorted impression of rubble and empty streets, bright with arcane currents and tinted like the dawn through her magic.

A shambling grouping of figures, torn flesh caked in chalky dust, eyes vacant and mouths open.

Their husks burned easily.

So did the next group she found, and the one after that. She leapt between fragments of necromantic energy, chasing them like a bird of prey. Vessels destroyed, the power loosed its grip and dissipated, swallowed by swells in the ambient current of necromantic magic saturating the air.

That current buzzed and flowed at the edges of her awareness. She followed it, found it condensing into impassable contours with the same deep, sucking cold she remembered surrounding Taako the last time she saw him. A lifetime ago. Or only a few days.

She extended her senses beneath the chilled earth and found that he was right. The—it was a barrier, Taako had called it a barrier—enclosed the ground as well as the sky. The arc, encompassed in her mind’s eye, remained unbroken under tons of rock and soil.

She roared impotently into the mist until her soul guttered. Forced into quiescence for a span of uncountable hours, she drifted once again. Sunlight couldn’t reach through the barrier; the world was unendingly dark and stagnant, save for her. Dust settled like grave dirt over the lifeless streets.

But those streets weren’t empty. Again and again she heard motion in the dark, streaked down, and alighted to find blank oozing eyes and gnashing teeth. She incinerated every one of them, cutting radiant curves back-and-forth around the dark keep that served as her lodestone. Until her grief overwhelmed her and she left its orbit to search for…for nothing.

Because she couldn’t get to Taako. Despite her clawing, her desperation, the scorching magic she poured and poured and poured out, she couldn’t chip away even a sliver of the keep or the barrier. She couldn’t find a single sign of him.

She’d never been this alone before.

Her prey diminished. She grew aimless. Everything looked different from the air; she and Taako had visited Westgate dozens of times, but now she couldn’t recognize a single landmark. She descended amidst a row of shuttered shops. Darkened windows, locked doors, silence like a held breath. Leaves still on the trees planted along the street. Everything was washed rosy by her presence.

Another stretch of hours slipped away. She found a bakery. She’d only been there once, but with Taako; someone had told him they did a mean croquembouche, and they had a few spare gold that season. They bought an entire tower of pastry, ate half for dinner and the other half, stale, for breakfast.

She couldn’t cry as a ghost. That was more frustrating than floating dreamlike through the city, craving the stretch of legs bearing her over solid ground. And if she let herself rest, if her attention drifted, the world would fall away and leave her insensate in utter black.

Empty streets meant that people had escaped, she reminded herself. All these abandoned, sealed buildings were just waiting for the sun to come back. She looked beautiful, reflected in their windows.

She retraced the steps she and Taako had taken from their rooftop hidey-holes to the dark keep. She fled, and returned to that path again. Here was the rooftop from which they watched the barrier flay a man. Here was the first empty apartment they sheltered in for the night, the tin cans from their meal still littering the floor. The second, the third, the store they raided for supplies. Here was the alley they encountered the drow woman who told them there’d be no escape into the Underdark.

Haunting those places didn’t change anything. Looking at all the signs Taako’s presence left in the world wouldn’t bring him back. She found that she could hold things touched by his hands—dirty spoons, discarded wrapping, little bits and bobs that caught his eye but weren’t useful enough to loot—without burning them, though she couldn’t feel them.

She found she could sink into the floor and sit in solid darkness. She rocketed back up a bare moment later, terrified that she’d lose any way to orient herself and become entombed, drifting in the cold earth.

She tried to cast Sending over and over. Her link with her magic was stronger than ever before, but unfamiliar without the mediating sensations of a body. Lup clutched at copper wire and babbled into her spellwork: _Taako, I miss you, I’m here, where are you, are you safe? How can I find you?_

He never replied. She wanted to believe the spell’s failure was her own fault.

She found lights in the dark, flickering dimly. They were nearly invisible through her radiance; she might’ve passed them a dozen times before. She streaked north and found gas lamps and torches held above dozens of bright eyes set in upturned faces.

The survivors. She wondered whether her light brought them comfort. What they thought she was. They might have better guesses than she did.

So she knew where everyone was hiding now. The bureau folks Taako so distrusted seem to have done good work after all. Maybe they should’ve gone with. Or maybe all the evacuation did was prolong the inevitable. How long would the people holed up around the docks survive once their food stores ran out? What if the undead attacked en masse?

They’d have to go through her. Lup didn’t linger above the docks for more than a minute. She roared back to the rubble and ping-ponged between the skeletons of smashed buildings and the empty shells of abandoned ones. She set to patrolling Market Street, Main Street, and the thoroughfares to the impassable gates, flash-frying any undead she encountered.

She was so much more powerful than she used to be. And frail. Burning her magic down staggered all her senses, left her wheeling and barely aware. But she could drift up out of reach like a balloon and wait for her rosy aura to brighten again.

If she destroyed all the zombies, then maybe the shadow creature or the pig that killed her would come out where she could fight them. If Taako was still alive, maybe that would allow him to escape.

Or maybe she’d burn out her wick and extinguish. She felt darkness calling to her whenever she tired. In resting she drifted and dimmed, world blurring around her as she stoked the embers at her core. She thought about abandoning her rage for peace. But there was still more she could do. Even if it was too late for Taako—and she refused to give up her last shard of hope—every undead killed made the city safer.

A worthy cause to die for, she thought, as coils of shadow lashed around her. Was it enough of a victory to provoke Kravitz, or was it meaningless, without Taako’s safety? She felt cold for the first time since her death. Tendrils bracketed her, caged her. She wasn’t sure if they could touch her, though their frigid, sucking cold quenched her flames. But she remembered how they felt around her ribs as she was carried to her doom.

Everything outside of her, beyond the shadows, was a blurry whirl of color. Too many bodies moving, too few of them breathing. Weakened, she broke free of the shadows as they chased another, unfamiliar source of radiance—a lance, slicing them apart. Good for whoever that guy was.

One of the undead was talking. She reined herself in and bit at the zombie clinging to his back instead, with what little remained of her power. She couldn’t burn hotly enough with her sense of self spinning like a top.

But yes, she could hear them. The little boy, the buff dude with the lance—props to him, seriously, Kravitz was looking ragged—the fat dwarf known as Merle “Fuckin’” Highchurch, and the dead guy. Someone else, a woman, bellowing from outside the melee.

“Miss Ghost!” the little boy called again. She was shocked to see how dim she looked, reflected in his round glasses. “Who was it that killed you? The person that animated all these zombies!”

None of her thoughts pour out of her as words. The zombie had she latched onto rotted like meat, the scuzzy film of magic laid into its bones burnt away. She deliberately projected an image—a massive monster enthroned, fanged skull hovering incongruously above rolls of bulky fat, black robe stretched taut. Red-tipped claws piercing her belly.

Nothing flickered in the boy’s eyes. Lup tried to find her words. “Pig fucker,” she said, then winced at her own language. C’mon, girl, the kid looked like he was about ten. “Big skull guy in robes. Not—a dude, but not a man.”

“A demon?” the boy guessed. “Or—a god?”

Lup tried to shrug, frustrated to not feel any of the muscles pulling the way she remembered. The undead hovering over her—the man she was reserving judgment on—straightened up, then startled as the guy with the lance and Kravitz crashed past. Lup felt vindictive pleasure, seeing Kravitz on the defensive. She wanted him shred to wisps.

As he was, he stumbled. Whatever internal nexus his shadows enshrouded seemed hunched and fumbling. The lance drove into that central column, accompanied by thudding bolts.

“Get over here!” the orcish woman commanded, wielding her crossbow like a cudgel as she stomped towards the few remaining zombies. “Angus, you could’ve been killed!”

The boy scowled at her. “Ma’am, I have some very important questions to ask! This ghost has knowledge that may be crucial to our survival!”

“Name’s Lup.”

“Lup,” the undead man said. “ _Lup_. How are—how are you feeling?”

Her entire form chimed a laugh, bubbling from her core to her edges. “Not great!” she cried, just this side of hysterical. “Not doing super hot here, unfortch.”

“Fine, stay right there!” the orc called, caving a zombie’s skull in with her massive fist. “But you—necromancer! Get away from the ghost! I’m coming over!”

“Uh—no, nope, that’s not great for me,” the man said. “I think I’m done? Yeah, I’m fucking done. Being in jail kind of got me _killed!_ ”

“You don’t look dead!” the orc said, kicking another zombie over. They’re scattered, easy targets, with their numbers diminished. “It’s Captain Bain who makes the call whether you get to go free, Barry! Him and Lucretia.”

Barry laughed dryly. “Hoo boy, yeah…about that…”

“I wouldn’t say another word, sir,” Angus said “Not until you can be assured of a fair trial! It’s clear that Corporal Killian has already made up her mind.”

Angus tugged on Barry’s shoulder until he leaned down. Lup leaned in too, straining to hear the words he whispered into Barry’s ear: _“The entire bureau may be compromised. Especially Bain’s people.”_

Barry swore. Lup’s mind whirled with a thousand questions. The man chasing Kravitz barreled through a small knot of zombies and yelled in disgust when the shadows melted back into smoke.

“What’re—what’re we whispering about over here?” Merle called, swaying in place. Even in the dim light from the burning barricade and guards’ torches, his face was obviously ashen. He cradled his wooden arm against his chest.

Kravitz whirled out of the smoke in a flurry of shadows. He clocked Magnus across the jaw and grappled for the lance, black edges curling to mist where they touched the shining metal. A dragonborn with a fistful of knives bounded past Lup. She sprang onto one of the zombie’s backs and kicked off, sending daggers flying into Kravitz on her descent.

They sunk into the roiling black. Kravitz barely seemed to notice, but the man headbutted him and wrenched his lance free. Then he hacked a cough and spit a mouthful of blood.

“Fuck me sideways,” Merle said. “Magnus! Y’want me to try a Sacred Flame from here?”

“No!” Magnus shouted. His lip was split across bloody teeth.

“If I hit you, you have it coming! You cut my damn arm off!”

“We’ve got this!” the dragonborn yelled. She vanished into the smoke. A second later, she reappeared on Magnus’s shoulder with her shirt pulled over her muzzle, flinging more daggers at Kravitz. Magnus wheeled away and rushed for clearer ground.

They didn’t have this. Kravitz shrugged off the dragonborn’s blows. Her daggers rattled against the cobblestones somewhere underneath his shroud. He gave Magnus’s lance a wide berth, and nothing else could touch him.

“I can’t do anything,” Lup fumed. Kravitz effortlessly leeched her fire the same way that the barrier and the keep did. The zombie she was latched onto crackled faintly.

Angus wrinkled his nose. Lup almost laughed to see it—such a normal expression for a solemn little boy. “Ma’am, sir, we only have moments to make our escape.”

“Angus, you should go back with the guards,” Barry said. “You’ll be safer with them.”

“No I won’t, sir!” he protested, tugging on Barry’s sleeve. “None of us will be safe until we solve this mystery!”

“Aren’t you _five?_ ” Merle said. “’N there’s a zombie behind you, kid.”

Barry shoved Angus away and slugged the zombie square in the gut, then winced and shook out his hand. Lup gusted forward like a loose paper bag. A groan rattled in the zombie’s throat as she tore at its chest. Fabric and skin blackened and pitted. Gods, she hated this. They were so much grosser when she couldn’t incinerate them in one blast. She fed her flames with the corpse as kindling, her fuse burnt down, rage exhausted.

“Come with us,” Barry said. It took Lup a moment to realize he was addressing her. She almost couldn’t hear him, having to wrench her attention away from the sizzle of fat under the zombie’s gaunt skin. “You can’t stay out here.”

Killian yelled for the other guards to back her up. The zombies were outnumbered now, the tide of the battle turned. They were caught between the remaining guards and the burning barricade. But so were Barry and Angus.

“I dunno if I’m coming with, babe, but I’m not gonna let anyone get killed,” Lup said. She propelled herself into the sky, leaving Merle to squawk and beat at the zombie with his warhammer.

Below, Magnus circled Kravitz guardedly, ignoring the dying flames at his back. The dragonborn scrambled for her thrown knives. Kravitz oozed over the cobblestones and concealed them.

“Just go home, friends. Don’t make me kill you here.” He puffed himself up to loom, wobbly and frayed. An obvious bluff.

Magnus stabbed at him with the lance. Kravitz cracked Magnus across the face with a tendril, sending him stumbling into the edge of the fire.

“Hey, wet blanket!” she shouted. “Kravitz!”

 _“What?”_ He whirled to face her. She definitely saw something like shoulders and maybe a head, thinning shadows draped like fabric over them.

She flickered and bobbed in a full-body wave. “I’m over here! Can’t catch me!”

“Is this supposed to be a distrac—” He cut off as Magnus brought his lance down like a club with an audible thud.

“Honey, over here!” the dragonborn called to Killian. “We’ve almost got him!”

“Fuck,” Killian swore. Her gaze darted to Barry and wrenched away. She veered towards Kravitz. “I’m coming! Nobody let the necromancer leave!”

“Bye!” Barry called. He shoulder-checked the zombie and sent it sprawling. Merle battered its skull with his warhammer until its forehead caved in with a disgusting squelch.

“This is some bullshit,” Merle griped.

“You’re telling me,” Barry said, eying the line of guards between him and the garrison, and the street beyond.

“Dunno how you expect to get outta here without being arrested, Barmy,” Merle said. “And you said they killed you?”

“Uh…yeah, basically. Captain Bain did.”

Lup sunk back down to hover at ground level. Merle’s face, illuminated by her hazy glow, contorted into a grimace. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “Well, shit. I knew those blue-suited bootstompers couldn’t be trusted. I guess I’m just an idiot for hopin’ otherwise.”

“No!” Angus balled his fists. “No, Miss Lucretia and Captain Davenport—and even Corporal Killian—are trying to do the right thing. I’m sure of it.”

“Then why don’t you go back to them?”

“Because I can do more good out here!” Angus said. He folded his arms and stared down Merle.

“Hell yeah, little man,” Lup said. “Up top.” He looked up at her, confused. She mimed high-fiving him and laughed, whirling to trace an arc with her finger, light flashing up and over the barricade. “As in, if you wanna run—you ever tried jumping a firepit?”

She and Taako had. Her for fun, him reluctantly, egged on by the whooping of other travelers in their caravans. The spectacle of the trick provided good cover for them to take turns snipping away wallets and picking unsuspecting pockets.

“Hang on, that sounds crazy—” Barry said, following her gesture. But the barricade was mostly smoke and embers now, and the scattered guards were regrouping, shaking rotten entrails off their swords and kicking bones away. “Alright, let’s go.”

Killian aimed a kick at Kravitz’s central mass. Instead of melting away, he dodged, swaying precariously. Black coils gathered and spooled around him as he retreated. The dragonborn dove for her spent ammunition. Magnus fell behind to fend off a zombie with the butt of his lance. He kicked it over and speared it, then straightened to hurl his weapon like a javelin.

The lance sliced through the air like a beam of light and impaled Kravitz. His shriek reverberated. Lup cheered as he quailed and scrabbled to pull the lance free.

Magnus raised his hand. The lance popped out of Kravitz, winding back through the air to slap against his open palm. He grinned, easy and menacing, teeth stained by his own blood.

Flecks of something smooth reflected light in the hole blown by the lance. Something pale, stark against the roiling black that slopped over the wound to close it up. “Well, it’s been real and it’s been fun—” Kravitz said, his voice catching thickly, “but I’m gonna—head back.”

Magnus threw the lance again. Angus outpaced Barry, pelting towards the barricade as guards yelled for him to stop. “This way, kiddo!” Lup called, racing overhead. There was a small stretch of piled furniture burnt nearly down to ash, burned wood interspersed with bright embers. Kravitz dodged Magnus’s thrown lance, but in the next instant it retraced its path back to his fist.

Angus jumped onto the barricade. He fell short and scrambled for footing on the loose jumble of charred wood. Barry swerved to put a zombie between himself and the nearest pursuing guard and waded in after Angus, eyes screwed shut against the smoke.

Angus climbed upwards and leapt over the top. His boots skid on the landing. He fell hard against the cobblestone, skinning his knees. Barry jumped after him and landed in similar disarray. Lup reached out with ghostly hands and pulled back, fretting, but a moment later Barry rose and scooped Angus up.

Angus bit his lip and screwed up his face, holding back tears as Barry carried him down the street. He looked awful. Bloody, covered in ash, with huge dark bags under his eyes and hair frizzed and oily. “I’m okay, sir,” he said. “I can walk.”

“Uh, no kiddo, you’re a mess,” Lup said, bobbing after them. “But that’s fine! We’ll get somewhere safe and you can have a good cry. Get the demons out, y’know?” She and Taako used to slink into the woods for privacy and take turns holding each other, one alert and on guard while the other sobbed into their shoulder.

She guttered. She wanted to like Angus and Barry, she worried for Merle and Magnus and even Killian. Thoughts of Taako—grief for Taako—overshadowed all else. They’d faced everything in life together. He was her other half. He might be beyond needing her, but she still needed him.

She caught Barry watching her. The naked intensity of his expression made her smile falter. He coughed and looked away. “Uh—I haven’t been out for a while. Um, Lup, do you happen to know—is there a good place we can go?”

Lup made to click her tongue, annoyed to not feel the pop against her teeth or hear the accompanying sound. Silence stretched for a moment. “World’s our oyster,” she said, eventually. “A shitty dead rotting oyster, but the point is that I smoked basically all the zombies I could find. Here’s hoping whatshisface is running low on corpses.”

“Who, ma’am?” Angus demanded. “Please. I need to know everything you know.”

“I don’t know much, is the thing.” Lup wanted to heave a sigh. “Kravitz’s asshole dad. Prooooobably not a human. Or a person. Dude’s like, huge. That’s all I’ve got for you, I’m sorry.”

She turned away from his watery, piercing gaze. His glasses were smudged to hell. Someone should fix that for him. “Um, he killed me. Probably—probably my brother, too.”

“Your brother?” Barry asked.

“My twin,” Lup said. She flit ahead, illuminating the dark for them.

Barry caved into Angus’s demands and put him down when they reached the end of Market Street. He led the way through alleys and down sidewalks. Lup hovered at the roofline, watching the dark keep in the distance. A few straggling zombies raised their faces and lurched towards her.

She led them away from Barry and Angus and lost them in the alleys. Maybe she could’ve destroyed them with the last of her power, but then she wouldn’t know if the boys were safe.

They were five streets over when she caught up to them. Barry was boosting Angus over the gate outside a fancy apartment building. They were far nearer to the keep than Lup would’ve liked. The patio and garden were probably picturesque before they were covered in dust and wilted from cold, sure, but at this point you couldn’t pay Lup to live there.

“Windows are too big,” Lup said, floating across the pavement with her light dimmed so she wouldn’t attract more attention. “And there’s too many entrances. Not the most defensible place you could’ve picked.”

“I, uh, live here,” Barry said. Angus swung his legs over the top of the gate and slid down the bars. “The guard confiscated my keys is all.”

Angus and Lup settled down to wait while Barry attempted to climb the gate. Lup surged forward in concern when he sliced his hand on a finial at the top, but he slid back to the ground in one piece and the wound barely oozed.

“Barry thinks he was raised by the Raven Queen,” Angus told her in undertone while Barry swore. “But revenants can spring from other powers and are infamously volatile. The bureau’s policy is to eliminate all undead, even the sapient ones, just in case. But then Bain turned out to be a vampire!”

Lup was more and more grateful she ran off. Barry straddled the top of the gate and she gave a low whistle, delighted that she could. He grinned down at her and started working his other leg over to drop to the patio.

While Barry struggled and recovered, Lup recounted everything she could remember about the keep—the nonsensical, twisting corridors, the patrolling ghouls, the throne room. The last place she saw Taako.

Barry shattered the decorative window between the lobby and the steward’s office and Lup slipped in to steal a keyring. They trekked up the stairs, Angus’s knees leaking blood that cut small rivulets through the ash.

Barry’s apartment didn’t have furniture nearly nice enough for the building. After the lobby, Lup was expecting something ritzy. There were high ceilings with beautiful crown molding and hanging chandeliers, but he’d plopped down a battered coffee table and a gingham couch in the living room and called it good. The single bedroom featured a cheap mattress and a cheaper bedframe, strewn with books and clothing. He was totally wasting the space.

The kitchen was tiny. Lup floated in to find Angus sitting on the counter, washing his knees in the sink as Barry rooted through a first aid kit, illuminated by a single lantern. “Sup, nerds.”

“Hey Lup. Done snooping?” Barry asked. “Sorry that it’s not much to look at.”

Lup shrugged. “Me and Taako have stayed in worse places.”

She turned to study the wallpaper. Super plain stripes that were dark enough they could be blue or green or just boring grey. Yawn. Probably came with the apartment. Why bother owning a nice place if you’re not gonna make it a _home?_ Her flickering light played across the walls, a pale off-white outshone by the lantern.

Taako had so many plans for the home they’d build, in the nebulous, unraveling future.

Angus cleared his throat. “Could Taako be a ghost like Miss Lup, Mister Bluejeans?”

Barry soaked a fistful of cotton swabs in rubbing alcohol and pressed them into Angus’s hand. “Time to disinfect. Sorry, buddy, it’s gonna sting. And, uh…that depends on what ‘Father’ did. Ghosts like Lup aren’t—a natural thing. Usually death sort of um…severs arcane energy from the soul. And the soul from the body.”

“He said something about banshees,” Lup said. “When he did it.”

“Oh! You were an elf? Well, uh, it says good things about you that you weren’t—corrupt enough, to become a banshee. You, um. You’re basically a soul fused with arcane energy. I’ve never heard of that being done to someone against their will. Usually that’s…the process for becoming a lich, except they also anchor their souls with a phylactery, as a safety measure.”

“That’s rad, but I don’t really care. I’m know I’m fine, I’m still here. I need to know—if Taako. Is okay.”

Barry smoothed bandages over Angus’s knee and closed the first aid kit with a snap. “None of the zombies were him,” Lup continued, voice small. “I’ve been checking.”

“That’s good,” Barry said evenly. “That’s really good. Zombies like these can’t infect victims—the necromancer, or, whatever’s doing this, will have to raise all the corpses they can get their hands on.”

“Could he be like me?” she pressed. Barry wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Why haven’t I seen him? Why isn’t he replying to my Sendings?”

“The—the best-case scenario.” Barry took a deep breath that rattled in his dry lungs. “The best-case scenario is that the Sendings aren’t getting through because the keep works like the dome and is absorbing magic. Or, sorry, that he’s getting them, but his replies can’t get out. But, um…”

“Ma’am?” Angus said. “Ma’am, I’m so sorry. But in all likelihood, he’s gone.”

He looked so exhausted that Lup couldn’t even be mad. “I know. Okay? But he wouldn’t give up on me. There’s gotta be something I can do.”

While Angus finished cleaning and bandaging himself, Barry fixed a plate of buttered bread and sliced salami. Lup redirected Barry to mull wine instead of brewing coffee, because it was obvious Angus needed sleep. They sat in silence while he ate, acutely aware that he was a living child—maybe the only living thing outside the safe zone—and that he had no one but them to keep him safe.

“There are a lot of observation spells we could try,” Barry said. “I sent a few Arcane Eyes to check around the keep last week, but I was looking for survivors. I wasn’t sure the guy who caused all this was actually in there.”

Angus washed his mouthful down with the weak wine. “That’s a great idea, sir!”

“Only problem is,” Barry said, wincing, “that I can’t cast like this. My magic’s kaput.”

“I’ll cast it,” Lup said. “Teach me.”

 

 

 

Her victory took two days. Angus fell asleep before they cracked their first book and Barry carried him off to tuck into bed. He and Lup held vigil by the coffee table, whispering over spellbooks and straining their ears for movement outside the curtained windows.

Barry’s apartment proved safe. Angus joined them when he was awake, delighted to learn about spellwork and undead. Once supplied with Barry’s old wand, Lup instructed him to practice Mending—a quiet cantrip that couldn’t misfire in a way that might get him hurt, or generation attention-grabbing noise. And one that he needed, because his only outfit was scuffed and peppered with holes. They were lucky his glasses hadn’t broken.

Undead didn’t need to sleep. Barry periodically rose from the coffee table to stretch his legs and back out, but Lup could hover with her nose to a book for hours. Time slipped past, unmarked by hunger or fatigue.

Arcane Eyes saw at a range of 30 feet, with dark vision. Lup flew her first into the keep’s wall on accident and nearly screamed in frustration when it disintegrated. She was pushing herself too hard, she knew, not allowing for a full recovery. But she needed this.

The Eyes were supposed to last for an hour, but Barry had found that, once close enough to see the keep, they dissipated within ten minutes. That had to be enough. Her second Eye circled the lumpy towers and misshapen windows. When its vision had gone so fuzzy that Lup could barely make out anything, she directed it through an opening in the keep’s wall. The image went fully black before she glimpsed what lay beyond.

She cast the spell once more, to similar effect, and the static in her vision persisted when she was back to staring at Barry’s couch. He badgered her into resting and she retreated within herself while he read aloud from one of his spellbooks in a low voice, to Angus’s rapt attention.

After Angus went to bed on the second day, Barry placed a silver mirror on the coffee table for her. “It was my mom’s,” he said with a shrug. That made sense; it looked too nice to be the kind of thing he bought for himself.

Lup had never tried scrying before. Her preferred school was Evocation. But she’d spent more hours studying Divination in Barry’s apartment than she had during her whole life previous, driven by desperate need. She leaned over the mirror, whispered the words, made the gestures, and willed the reflection of her own face—phantasmal and tinted with rosy orange—to fade away.

The picture went black. She stared, burning with hope. Barry shot her a worried look as the rug underneath her smoked faintly.

Seconds of nothing stretched like taffy. Then, faintly, the black shifted and ebbed. She’d made a sensor. The sensor was supposed to be near Taako—she sent the picture whirling and glimpsed a faint gradation to the darkness.

There was a window high above her vantage, open and glassless in a smooth dark wall. The sensor was in the keep. She directed it to sink and caught motion around the edges of the mirror. Oozing black.

 _Kravitz_. Blanketing the room. Fat and happy again, after all the effort Magnus and everyone had put into shredding him. Oddly enough, random junk rose out of his shadows like islands in a dark sea. Chairs. A patio umbrella. Empty planters and flowerpots. A bucket, a table on its side, piles of clothes, chunks of brick and rock…

The mirror dimmed. She pressed herself to it, through it, wisps of her soul phasing into the silver.

“Careful!” Barry said. She noticed the silver dulled where she touched it and drew back, her gaze fixed.

The shadows flowed. Lup could only tell by the dim shapes within them. She shifted the sensor. The edges of the mirror were fully dark now. Kravitz billowed around a neat stack of books tucked into a flowerpot. He swept tendrils forward, jabbing— _pointing_.

“You’re fucking blind,” Kravitz said.

Lup snapped the sensor up and spotted something light in the center of the picture, framed by the blur creeping across the mirror. She zoomed forward.

An open book. Notes scribbled on the margins, in familiar handwriting. A shadowy tendril jabbed in front of the sensor. She turned.

There was a lump of blankets and mismatched clothes piled deep on the floor. The sensor was nearly dead, the picture in the mirror the size of a coin. She commanded it to speed closer.

Kravitz beat it there. He flicked a tendril into the pile and flipped the edges of the top blanket up. Lup heard an indignant huff that would’ve stopped her heart. A hand snaked out of the pile to slap the tendril. The mirror’s surface swam, leaving Lup staring at her own reflection.

“Lup, I’m so sorry,” Barry said. She raised her face to see sorrow written across his.

She wished like hell she could cry in relief. “No, Barry, it worked! I saw him. I saw him, and he was moving.”

“Oh, thank fuck. I thought Kravitz had—hijacked the sensor, or something.”

“No. We were right.” Her prayers were answered, though she’d directed them to no god. “I think he’s alive. I think he was sleeping.”

“I thought elves don’t sleep?”

“I don’t care how elves do things. Me and Taako always slept, when we could.” When they felt safe, usually. Gods, she hopes he’s not hurt. “Sometimes you need to check out of your surroundings for a while, you feel me? Fuck, I hate this. I got barely a minute.”

“Hey,” Barry said. He reached his hands across the table in offer. She recognized his intent and laid hers atop them. Little hairs on the back of his knuckles singed. He didn’t wince or flinch away, and while she could barely feel anything, she was grateful for the gesture.

He opened his mouth to continue. Excited, Lup cut him off. “I’m gonna cast it again. I know where he is now, I can point the sensor at him before it flakes.”

“Wait a minute!” Barry pulled his hands back and grabbed for the pile of books. “If he’s sleeping, then I know something else we can try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life's been exciting for a while. I spent more than half of January out of state. Thanks for your patience, waiting for an update. This won't be the last. =)
> 
> A chapter timeline from my notes, because I need help remembering too:
> 
> 1) Taako | 9 days after the apocalypse  
> 2) Lucretia | Day 1  
> 3) Davenport | Day 1  
> 4) Merle | Day 3  
> 5) Barry | Day 5  
> 6) Kravitz | End of Day 11  
> 7) Magnus | Beginning of Day 11  
> 8) Angus | Day 11  
> 9) Merle | Day 11  
> 10) Lup | Day 11
> 
> and, next time: Taako | Days 4 and 13
> 
> Fairies & Fungus gets done way faster cos I've got Sparkles to keep me on track. We have approximately 100k unposted and waiting for edits, by the way.
> 
> Speculation and enthusiasm fuels me. I would love more feedback on Mistakes. <3


	11. Thinning pall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako has a few fateful conversations. None of them help solve his problems.

Some fool hadn’t locked their door, as Lup discovered after she and Taako had painstakingly climbed in through the attic window. Taako heard her downstairs, something solid and heavy scraping across the floor as she constructed a barricade to keep them safe overnight.

They’d already moved all the food worth stealing to the upper bedroom. Now Taako stripped the sheets off the bed, making a nest on the floor amidst their spoils. There wasn’t much: some tins of mackerel, a few cans of beans, red and green, that would be soggy and sulfurous. The former residents must’ve raided their larder before fleeing. But the twins had a length of hard salami from the last house, barely moldy from being left out in the damp, that should last another four days.

It had already been four days since the shadowy barrier engulfed the city. Taako upended an oak chest and added its contents to the pile. Looked like a lot of white frills at first, but he quickly realized that someone’s wedding dress had been left carefully folded inside. This person had their priorities straight, abandoning sentimentality in favor of food. Taako approved.

He stretched a sleeve of the dress down his arm. The lace was cheap, stiff stuff. He clicked his tongue in disapproval and dumped it to pad his nest. The days were as cold as the night and growing colder, and he and Lup only had so many spell slots to burn. They needed all the insulation they could get.

If it stayed dark out the temperature would keep dropping, and soon any patches of damp would freeze. Navigating the rooftops would become a lot more dangerous. The twins didn’t make it this far to be taken out by a twisted ankle, no sir.

They had to figure something out. Evacuation was off the table. He and Lup weren’t idiots, they weren’t going to let the so-called ‘Bureau’ or ‘Brigade’ or whatever haul them off to the docks. Cramming everyone into close quarters was like packing a powder keg. When the food ran out for good, that’s where the riots would start.

No, they didn’t need to throw themselves on the mercy of strangers. He and Lup were beautiful and talented and charming, sure, but they were also elves, and this was a human city. He doubted anyone would be lining up to befriend them. And if they were recognized, it would probably be by one of the bosses from the caravan they ditched when the sky blacked out. Or one of the many, many marks they’d swindled over the years.

The stairs creaked. Taako froze, his ears flipping up, and held his breath. He relaxed when Lup poked her head into the room. The braids he did for her two days ago were coming loose, so she’d tucked all her flyaways and frizz under a bandana. It kept her ears downturned towards her jaw and made her look perpetually worried, but her eyes were bright.

“Hey, bro,” she said. “There’s people outside.”

He stared blankly. “So?” She brushed past him and headed for the window. He scrambled after her, keeping low. “They’re not trying to break in, are they? This is our fuckin’ squat, they can get their own.”

Lup pressed her face to the window and peered out. Then she went for the latch. It squeaked under her fingers and Taako, hunkering out of sight beneath the window frame, groaned in protest. “Chill, bro,” she huffed, shooting him a grin. “I did an ace job with the doors. If they wanna break in we’ll have enough time to wrap up everything in the house up and put a bow on it before hitting the roof.”

“That doesn’t explain why you wanna say hi to these cats. They’re not our, our neighborhood welcoming committee. They didn’t get us a casserole dish and a brochure with the HOA reqs.”

“Just look, babe.” Lup threw the window open and stepped aside to make space for him.

Taako squeezed his eyes shut, puffed a breath through his nose, and stood to lean out the window. “Hail and well met!” he called.

Below the window and up the street, nearly out of view, a small knot of people froze. Even with darkvision, Taako could only make out silhouettes. They were traveling without a lantern. That was interesting; at least one of them must not be human. His ears flicked as they debated something. He caught snatches of their conversation but couldn’t make out much more than the difference between their voices.

“Check it out,” Lup whispered, as one figure broke off from the group and jogged back towards them. “The cute girl’s a drow.”

“What do I care?” Taako hissed. “I don’t know any drow.”

The drow stopped just below the window. Her button nose poked out of the scarf wound at the collar of her jacket. “Oh my god,” she squeaked, head bobbing under a mass of white hair as she gawked. “You’re Taako!”

Lup ducked away from the window and doubled over with silent laughter. Taako froze.  “Uh, hello, madam.”

“Oh my god, you _are_ Taako!”

“It’s always nice to meet a fan,” he said weakly. Where did this girl know him from? Did he win her shoes in a bet? Scam her with fake gold? On closer inspection, the stick she was carrying was way too short to be a useful cane. It had to be a focus. This could get nasty, fast. He drew his own wand, keeping it out of view. Lup patted his wrist and wheezed.

“The magical chef!” she blithely continued. “I saw your show a couple years ago, it was great!”

Taako’s eartips reddened. He remembered that caravan. He’d done three shows and had the most fun in his life. Everything was perfect—until the manager wanted more than a fifty percent cut just for letting the twins use the chuckwagon. That left them with barely anything, after covering supplies, and simply wasn’t worth the increased workload, since they had to turn back around and serve dinner the same night.

“Oh! Um, yeah, hell yeah that’s me. I’m so glad you enjoyed the performance! You know that was, kind of a test run, sort of a preview of big things to come! Why, I even remember you, little—um—”

“Ren!”

“Yes, little Ren! Right there in one of the rows, in one of the seats. We’re sort of on…hiatus. Kind of doing a revamp, is all, and then, well, and then the world ended. But, we’ve got a good thing going on right now, and when this whole zombie sitch is over I look forward to seeing you in the audience again!”

Taako had done the math and figured that they could only make the cooking show work with a start-up investment that covered a wagon, but Ren didn’t need to know that. She beamed back at him, oblivious to the sweat gathering under his collar. “I would love that! I’m definitely all about speculatin’ on everything good that’ll happen once we’re through this mess! Is there anything I can do for you, Taako? I know you’re a great and powerful wizard, but you’re not travelin’ alone, are you?”

Lup threw an arm around Taako and leaned out the window. She’d pulled off her headband to free her ears and finger-combed her bangs to frame her face. “Hey girl, ‘sup? You might remember me as Taako’s flaming hot sous-chef.”

Ren giggled. Taako rolled his eyes and gagged theatrically. “You’re not my hot anything, dear sister.”

Lup hip-checked him aside and braced her elbows on the windowsill. “Sooo, I guess there must be an entrance to the Underdark around here? How’re things going down there? You guys having zombie issues?”

Taako heard her real questions: Was the Underdark an option for escape? Could they find passage through the tunnels to the outside world? He doubted it, if Ren was out on the streets. But he guessed it couldn’t hurt to ask.

Ren ducked her face into her scarf with a pinched expression. “Well…” she said, voice muffled, “I sure hope not! I wish I could say I knew for sure. The thing is, most of the tunnels are cut off!”

That was even more interesting. Taako crowded his sister in the window frame, draping across her back. “Cut off? And how? What does that look like, exactly?”

“Same kind of barrier that y’all’ve got up here!” Ren said. “Was hopin’ the Bureau folks’d know more. Comes straight outta the rock and kinda goes along the floor of the caves, like a big bowl. I didn’t wanna try stepping on it!”

“How deep are these caves?” Taako asked, ears swiveled forward.

“Not very! Not so deep that anyone lives in ‘em. Not even a tenth of the way to the Underdark proper, I’d say. I couldn’t find any way to get further down. I hope everyone’s okay.”

“More okay than us,” Taako said. Lup kicked his shin.

“Yeah, about that—you guys wanna come with us?” Ren said, gesturing back up the street towards her group, waiting where she left them. “We’re headed to the docks. Y’all are talented wizards, I’m sure everyone there could really use your help.”

“You know, Ren, that sounds like a sweet deal,” Taako said, plastering on a smile. “The thing is, we’ve already settled—settled in for the night. Gotta catch those good good Z’s. But you guys shouldn’t hang around here on our account!”

“Yeah, babe, we’ll be fine here!” Lup said. “Really glad we met you. We’ll catch up!”

“Okay, y’all!” Ren said, looking slightly worried. But if she thought they were bomb-ass wizards then she must know he and Lup were able to take care of themselves. “I’ll keep an eye out for you guys! Stay safe, now!”

Taako hesitated for a moment, chewing his lip. “Ren?” he called, after she took her first steps away.

“Yeah?”

“Just—be careful with those blue-jacket thugs. You know what they say about power and responsibility—that it corrupts, right?”

Lup snorted. “Pretty sure that’s not it, bro.” She knew he was right, though. Nobody who was set up to make a power grab after a disaster could be trusted. Especially not when, conveniently, the criminals that used to run the government were all dead as doornails.

“Whatever, the point is—just watch out for any funny business, okay?”

Ren pulled down her scarf so they could see her smile. “I’ll stay safe too! Thanks, Lup, Taako.”

She left and they closed the window to keep the chill air out. Lup lit a magic fire in a cooking pot and they roasted beans to scoop with rolled-up slices of salami.

The next day, they raided every house on the street and came away with an entire sack of food and clothes, and after that they ranged closer and closer to the black keep. The zombies took more effort to sneak around, but at least the twins weren’t at risk of running across any other looters.  And the pickings were ridiculously good: whole houses and shops virtually untouched. Their owners evacuated in a hurry—or else were killed. A lot of the food was stale or spoiled, sure, but they’d done more with less.

All the while, Taako scribbled diagrams on scavenged paper. Lup eyeballed the distance to the misty barrier, from the black ceiling of their amputated world to where it descended to engulf the outer wall. Knowing that it enclosed the ground was the final piece Taako needed. He could almost picture the dimensions of the whole thing.

Because of that, he knew where to push. Where the barrier would be thinnest. Because of that, they snuck into the keep, making for the outer wall. Lup’s firepower almost saw them through.

And then she died.

He’d been right, and she’d still died. Because Kravitz caught them.

So if Kravitz thought he could make Taako stay put in a room without a locking door after he confessed that Lup’s ghost was still around, then he was the biggest idiot in this whole mess, zombies included.

Not that there were many of those left. Yeah, newsflash: building your army out of creatures too dumb to work doorknobs proved you were just as stupid as them. They _let_ Taako shove them off the top landing to pancake against the floor stories below. Taako was not a rough boy; a single zombie could’ve overpowered him in about four seconds. But he went down a line of six and tipped each in turn to their doom because Kravitz had ordered them not to hurt him.

That left the ones on the ground floor, between him and the exit. The keep’s layout was nonsensical, but Taako thought of the open area at the bottom of the stairs as a foyer. In a sick parody of a ball, a couple dozen zombies wheeled through it at all hours, shambling in circles. Others slumped in place like puppets lain idle. They completely ignored their pancaked buddies. Taako hoped those were kaput, but any one of them could spring up and attack, as far as he knew.

Taako didn’t risk descending close enough to see the holes torn in their clothes or their mutilated features. He endured a heart-stopping moment of terror on a landing two stories up, imagining their faces raising towards him, moans rattling from their throats before they rushed the stairs. He fled back to his room before he got caught having a panic attack.

Things the zombies had scavenged for him, in their best attempt to follow Kravitz’s orders: blankets, dresses, whole-ass ugly drapes torn off some grandmother’s window, rugs, button-down shirts, a cloth awning that probably once shaded a hotel. Parts of a park bench. Loose bricks and stone. Two full garbage bins. Basically the entire contents of a café, most usefully sacks of coffee beans, flour, potatoes, carrots, beets, and onions, but also an assortment of patio furniture and the tip jar. Cartons of eggs, all smashed and goopy. Taako tricked Kravitz into dragging his spooky black bedsheet through those.

Kravitz had tossed the ruined cartons and everything he deemed unsafe out the window, mostly loose glass shards, while Taako stood against the far wall and complained until he was allowed to keep the kitchen knives. It’s not like he could hurt Kravitz with them. He carried one whenever he crept around anyway, a thin boning knife with a straight spine and sharp point.

Not that he got to do much creeping around for a couple days. Kravitz showed back up looking like he’d been wrung out on a washboard and lingered like a bad cold. He could tell when Taako was only pretending to sleep, too, though at first he took the attempt as sincere and let Taako be.

“Maybe if you ate something, you’d be able to fall asleep.”

“Fuck off.” Taako buried deeper into his pile of rugs and stolen clothes. He almost couldn’t feel the sucking cold of the stone underneath.

“You have to be hungry.”

“Quit having opinions about flesh ‘n blood bodies. You’re a talking goth curtain, what do you know about hunger?”

“That it’s bad for you.” Kravitz’s voice came from all corners of the room. He’d spent hours spread across the floor, likely absorbing energy from the keep to rebuild his shadowy bulk. Maybe Taako could’ve learned something useful from watching that process if his arcane senses weren’t kaput.

“My guy, you can talk to me about hunger when you’ve spent a couple weeks helping pull wagons through mud on one shitty meal a day. I’m perfectly fine. I’m resting. I’m conserving—conserving energy. So shut up.”

Kravitz huffed. Taako snickered; he sounded like a windsock. “I got you food, Taako. Eat a potato or something.”

“You know what’s bad for people? Raw fuckin’ potatoes, genius. So let me just light a fire—oh wait, I can’t, because I’ve got bupkis for magic juice.”

“Then eat a carrot!”

“I’ve been eating the carrots.”

“You have _not_ —”

“That, my fella, is you speaking from ignorance. I had a whole _bushel_ of carrots while your dad was chewing you out for getting your ass kicked by my sister doing a Casper impression and some dude with a pointy stick. When’s that happening again, by the way—the thing where you fuck off and leave the room? Also, you getting your ass kicked, because that was great.”

Kravitz made the windsock noise again. “I expect I’ll be called away soon. The survivors can’t cause any further issues, but my father should be almost done making this next batch of undead.”

“Ominous. Swell. Hey, mechanically speaking, how is it that a giant pig births a talking cloak?”

“You’re unbelievable. You’re not afraid of me at all, are you?”

Taako wheezed a laugh. “You don’t even talk a big game. You’re like a worried mother hen. ‘Taako, bundle up’, ‘Taako, don’t play with the zombies’, ‘Taako, eat your veggies’. I mean, I’m in favor of getting attention, but terms and conditions apply.”

“You know, I’m probably supposed to have killed you by now. I’m likely going to get in trouble for not killing you. What do think about that, huh? Maybe you could be just a touch more cooperative? Just a smidge?”

“What do I think?” Taako heaved himself up to sitting and clapped his palms together, gesturing at Kravitz with his fingertips. “Well, what I think…is that you’re a coward. You don’t wanna kill people, you don’t like the zombies. Tell your dad to get stuffed! What’s that cat ever done for you?”

Kravitz lobbed a damp paperback at Taako. The pages flapped and it thudded to the floor well short of his rug pile. Taako flipped him off, then scrambled to block a beet flung at his face from the opposite direction. It bounced off him and rolled away. Kravitz followed up with an onion. Taako fumbled the catch and the onion rolled into his lap.

“Reduced to slinging vegetables! You know, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent!”

Kravitz went still. Taako waited for a beat, then narrowed his eyes and squinted around the room. There was so little light that even his darkvision couldn’t do much for him. Kravitz blended with the stone, except for that central lump that he didn’t even seem aware of. Taako swiveled to face where he thought that lump was, a silhouette that could be Kravitz or could be one of the garbage cans. Strong resemblance, if you asked him.

“You there, thug? You didn’t break whatever—whatever you’re using for processing power instead of a good ol’ meat brain on the simple question of whether you should do things you hate? Cuz I’ll answer that one for you. The answer is _‘no’_.”

Several moments passed. Taako lay back down and started shucking the onion, rubbing his fingers together to snow little bits of papery skin.

“It’s not that simple,” Kravitz said, so quietly that he might be speaking from the hallway. “I have—a duty.”

“You don’t have doody. We covered the whole body thing.”

Kravitz managed to make a choking noise without lungs or a throat. “Alright, that’s enough! We’re gonna sit here and enjoy some fucking silence for a while, huh? How’s that sound? Psyche, that’s a trick question, you see, because I don’t want you to answer! We’re having quiet time now.”

Taako closed his eyes, face impassive. He let tenuous seconds of silence stretch out, long enough for a few relaxing breaths. Then he took a loud, crunching bite of his onion and set to sloppily devouring it.

Kravitz vibrated hard enough from sheer irritation to audibly buzz. Taako grinned into his snack.

Taako finished his onion and stared at the insides of his eyelids. He managed to doze for a few hours, waking once from Kravitz’s prodding and again when he slithered out of the room. Probably his dad had ordered him away to wrangle some more zombies. Taako could look forward to listening to him bitch, again, because for some reason Kravitz wouldn’t do the sane thing: break the zombies and tell his old man to fuck off.

As soon as Kravitz disappeared from hearing, Taako struggled out of his pile and sifted through the mess for candles. He came up with a few stubs. He upended the skull full of fingerbones, all that was left of the creepy-as-fuck skeleton servant Kravitz gifted him, and packed the candle stubs into the dome. It wiggled its upper teeth in protest.

No chomps without a jawbone, huh Bones? They could be lame together. A head without shoulders and a wizard without magic in the tank, breaking out of an open jail cell together.

It took minutes of intense concentration and fingers-snapping for Taako to prestidigitate a candle flame. He shuddered in his sweaters, nearly winded from the effort. Kravitz needed to stay gone for a while so he could build up some more juice. He used one candle to light the others, found his boots and pulled them on. Then he went for his boning knife.

The ceiling and window were too high above to get a good look with candlelight unless he climbed, and that was too much fuckin’ effort. The walls and floor were glassy, seamless black material in all directions. They felt a little like smooth stone to the touch, but mostly like dull pain and vicious cold.

The walls opened to form a blank doorway. No texture change for a lintel or jamb, all curves instead of angles. Beyond, the hallway’s winding path made it seem like a tunnel bored out of solid stone. Only the floors were perfectly flat. Taako picked a spot and crouched down. He plunked the skull on the floor and let it rock in place, making the candles flicker. He dug his knife into the wall at knee-level. With some elbow grease, he scored a thin line.

The obvious assumption was that the stone was fake magic bullshit. But it paid to do the work before drawing conclusions. He’d studied damn hard to know his materials; might as well rule out the non-obvious.

It probably wasn’t as hard as quartz because the knife blade scratched it. Hardness picks would’ve done him better, but he wasn’t gonna wish for tools he’d only seen in books. They didn’t matter. He had this. He was gonna figure this shit out.

There were no grains, so it wasn’t schist or gabbro. No inclusions. No bubbles, no visible crystal habit, though it’s not like he had any way to magnify and confirm. His sweater tinted orange under the candlelight. The stone did not; it sucked down light like it did magic. When he put his face up against it, candle-skull held close, he could’ve been staring at the insides of his eyelids again. Maybe under a frozen sleep mask.

The stone was more than dark enough to be mafic, except for its gloss. Otherwise, the black color could’ve been from high magnesium and iron. That would’ve been baller for transmutation, except for the stone’s other intrinsic properties vis-à-vis magic sucking.

Looked totally wrong for shale. Dulled his knife before it cleaved into flat sheets like slate would’ve. Honestly, the keep seemed hewn out of a solid chunk of obsidian.

Which was nonsense. No way a volcano could’ve crapped all this up. Also? The Dragonscoast didn’t have volcanoes. The stone probably wasn’t even felsic, gloss or not, because it probably wasn’t made of something normal like silica at all. The keep may as well be an alien blister of a pluton ascended from the depths of hell, throne rooms for demons included.

There’s a thought. Maybe all the weird rooms and hallways were inclusions of a weaker stone that’d been chiseled or washed out. Hats off to whoever dusted up afterwards, in the case, because surveying the hallway revealed no sign that anything of the sort had happened.

Taako nearly snapped his knife trying to hew a chunk out of the wall because he wanted some not-obsidian to play with. Knap a sharp edge, cut up some potatoes, maybe try to stab Kravitz. Profit? Whatever, that plan clearly wasn’t getting off the ground. His fingers felt numb just from touching the stuff. His nailbeds ached. If they turned black and his fingernails fell out then he was gonna make Kravitz eat them.

He reached the end of the hall’s arc, the little stretch of sheltered stone that ballooned into the expansive foyer with the suddenness of being pushed off a cliff. Wind howled in this space the way it didn’t throughout the rest of the town, to Taako’s memory. He shivered and cupped his hand over the skull’s neck-hole to protect the candles.

Maybe the original castle’s bones had been used as a substrate, black stone grown over them like crystal, or a fungus. But the massive rubble pile at the foot of the keep belied that.

There was no way to check for any similarity in floorplans, unfortunately. He’d never been inside the castle. Caravan wastrels didn’t get to see the Burgermeister’s digs.

Was the keep conjured? How many expert wizards would that’ve taken? Did they teleport it in from some dank hell-plane? Did the barrier appear first, or spread from the keep?

What he needed was an eyewitness, someone who was was there when everything went down on day zero. But whatever that cataclysm had looked like, it’d leveled buildings and shattered windows for blocks around. Everyone close enough to get a good look was definitely dead, their corpses zombified and left goose-stepping for the motherfucker who murdered his sister. If Kravitz let his dad have her body, Taako was going to lose it.

He took a few ragged breaths. Scrubbed his face, shoved wisps of hair behind his ears. Then he got moving. As far as he knew, the motherfucker-in-chief didn’t appear outside his throne room, several flights of stairs down. Kravitz was either there or wrangling zombies on the ground level. That still left plenty of ground to cover before he got caught and hauled back to his room. Or maybe Kravitz would finally decide to punt him off the top of the stairs.

Nah. Krav didn’t have the balls. Literally speaking. The semi-incorporeal form and lack of agency meant he was probably some jumped-up construct. Like a fancy Unseen Servant that snarked. “Father” must’ve wanted a toady that was smarter than the zombies. The pretense of family was weird, but Taako had no idea how demons worked. Also? It wasn’t his problem.

His problem was that all the halls looked the same. Lup was the twin with the sense of direction. Taako backtracked three times to reorient himself at the top of the staircase. The keep’s layout was more like a hive or a cave. He passionately resented every one of the ‘windows’ gaping in the walls. They were only useful for letting in the cold; there wasn’t even a faint glimmer of light outside.

Most of the hallways, aside from the one outside his room, opened to three or more blank spaces. There would also be bare lengths of wall that didn’t match up to any rooms. Taako couldn’t figure a good reason to bother concealing rooms; the stone might just be arbitrarily solid in spots. There were obviously no mechanisms for concealed doors, and the keep would just eat magic triggers. Tapping those walls with his knuckles produced the same muffled sound as tapping around the doorways. And made him feel like he’d skinned his knuckles, so he stopped.

With all the unhewn spaces, the keep wasn’t that big on the inside. Taako was still riding the initial adrenaline high from sneaking out when he finished the top floor. He chewed his lip and descended the stairs.

There were hallways across the foyer that the staircase didn’t connect to, dark spaces just visible in the wall. A nasty drop for whoever didn’t watch their feet. Taako left the foyer at the nearest landing—a couple steps off-kilter from the stairs, like the throne room had been—and swept that floor as well. And the next, and the one after that.

Zero loot. Absolutely nothing of interest. Why punch your keep full of holes like cheap swiss cheese if you weren’t going to use the space? Maybe not-obsidian-likely-from-hell went for a premium and the contractors were just skimping on costs. Maybe this place wasn’t finished yet. Maybe there would be residents moving in later.

No sound except the wind and his own footsteps. If the foyer was ahead of him then he’d gotten turned around. He froze, ears extended and quivering, and changed directions. He’d have to call it quits instead of descending any further. The zombies were uncomfortably close. And while he hadn’t spotted Kravitz down below, he had no doubt that Kravitz could easily spot him.

Putting his candles out might’ve made him a little stealthier—black-and-white darkvision was crap for details, but nothing he’d found so far _had_ any details—but he’d worked too damn hard to light them, and their warmth felt good in his hands.

He was searching for the stairs to retreat up to his room when he found a ramp instead. A narrow passage titled downwards to the left, solid walls to his right and ahead. He extended the skull into the opening and saw a grouping of stairs, then another smooth expanse, then more stairs.

The enclosed space made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, even though he was more shielded from the wind here than anywhere else in the keep. There were no openings except the one behind him. His boots made no noise sliding down to the first step. The air was still frigid, biting into his lungs with every breath.

He gripped the skull tighter and ignored its wiggling teeth. He had the impulse to talk to it. But that impulse might get him killed if the zombies heard, and the skull’s company couldn’t hold a candle to his sister’s. He missed her so bad.

He held his breath as he descended past the level where the zombies were. And then for several stretches of stairs beyond that, because he couldn’t be sure he was past them without Lup confirming. The passage continued to slope downwards, exactly as steep as before. He couldn’t see or hear anything creeping down after him.

Then something shone ahead. His heart leapt in his throat. He slid down a stretch of ramp and skid to a stop in front of an actual, gods-given patch of limestone sitting in the wall, locked on all sides by black. Ahead, the passageway veered sharply. The steps around the corner were mundane stone. They showed signs of wear, smooth spots in their centers where other boots had passed, and the air smelled damp.

This might be part of the original castle. It was too much to hope that the angle of the passage had taken him outside the keep. He cupped the skull against his sweater and rushed ahead before he could wonder why this basement would be preserved, or why the passage from the keep would connect.

The last stretch of ramp ended and Taako was confronted with an open wood door. Hinges creaked as he slipped inside.

He was definitely in a basement. Rocky floor, wood plank ceiling. Shelves covered in books, of all things. Journals, papers, folders, little curios. Medals from recent years with names that meant nothing to Taako. Two heavy oak desks shoved together, each with chairs, and another door beyond them. Looked like a wine cellar converted into an office.

There was a huge, faded brown patch on the floor in the corner, amidst a few streaks of chalk dust and candlewax. The whole setup stank of bleach. Looked like a crime scene, one that no one would ever be available to investigate. Not Taako’s problem: he didn’t fuck with necromancy.

Though whoever had used this room sure did. The books on the shelves had a certain _je nais sai quoi._ The ‘ _quoi’_ being leathery textures, brittle pages with mysterious stains, and more egregious tableaus of undead than the one in the foyer. “Hey Bones, family pictures!” Taako murmured to the skull, angling it to examine a few grisly diagrams.

He put the book down and tried the far door. It creaked open into a dusty, furnished room with two more doorways. The walls were heavily streaked with smoke above empty sconces. The worn upholstered couch, and the rug underfoot, hadn’t been washed in a lifetime. They were so greyed with thick dust that Taako almost sneezed.

The dust was piled even thicker below the large slate board covered in scribbles against one wall. Taako squinted at the diagrams and decided they weren’t worth his time. Daddy Demon may have decided to not destroy necromancy central down here, but he probably couldn’t fit his mountainous butt through the door or use his massive red claws to hold a stick of chalk, so these notes weren’t his. Ergo, they weren’t relevant to Taako’s situation.

There was an icebox in the corner. Taako opened it and wrinkled his nose at the smell. The ice was a slushy puddle in the basin and someone’s bag lunch was rotting inside. Smelled like it was egg salad in a former life. He’d rather eat the raw potatoes.

There was another office on the other side of the couch, stocked with necromancy books but absent of obvious murders. Taako paused to snicker at the name on the framed certificate leaning on the floor against a bookcase. The desk was a sea of coffee rings and loose papers.

He went back to the room with the slate board and through the last door. That led into a hallway with a much cleaner carpet. The plaque on the wall behind Taako had three names on it, all with _“Master Necromancer”_ appended. The plaque across the hall had two names of divination specialists.

This must be where the Burgermeister hid his wizards. Yikes. Real shitty digs. What kind of expert magic genius lets themselves get stuffed in a basement? If Taako and Lup could’ve done the whole academia thing they would’ve figured out a way to get better than _this_. Turn power into fame, score an office with a view.

Most of the magic disciplines weren’t represented, and none of the other offices had anything worth stealing. There was a bathroom, but the taps spat out rusty water, then mud, then stopped working. In the evocation master’s office—only one of him to three whole necromancers, had anyone else thought that was suspicious as fuck?—Taako found a pot half-full of cold, stale coffee. He carried it with him to the room labeled _“Archive”,_ in case he decided he was desperate later.

He set the coffee pot on the floor and propped the skull in it. This was the jackpot. The archive was a small room, maybe the size of a walk-in closet, but wall-to-wall with reference texts packed on wooden shelves. They must be worth thousands gold and they weren’t even warded. Usually only universities were this easy to knock over.

With shaking hands, Taako pulled entire rows down. He worked in a fervor, sifting for texts on conjuration and transmutation. Anything that mentioned extraplanar studies went into his pile. If he figured out where the magic-eating keep was from, and how it got here, maybe that could tell him how to block its effects. If he built up just half a day’s worth of juice, he could cast the spells he needed to sneak by the zombies and get the hell out of the keep.

Hell, maybe he could hide in the basement long enough to recover. He could be closer to seeing Lup than he thought.

He thumbed through a dozen tables of contents and indexes to weed out what he didn’t need and started shoving everything that looked useful into his sweaters. He should relocate to a room he could barricade.

He was cinching his belt around his tucked-in sweaters when a woman coughed politely behind him.

He whirled, stumbling amidst the pile of books left at his ankles. She was leaning casually against the closed door. Elven ears, painted mouth, bright outfit, hair piled on top of her head. Not nearly so pretty as Lup, but she had a certain style. Taako’s heart clenched.

“ _You’re_ not supposed to be down here,” she said. She even sounded like Lup. Their accents were just two shades apart.

Taako backed up against the bookcases. “Looks like you caught me. Hey, do you know a Kravitz? Because that’s—that’s really who I expected to come looking for me. Uh, hello stranger, who are you?”

She smiled at him, showing all her teeth. “Lydia, darling. Charmed. I think I know who you must be. Isn’t this a funny way to meet?”

Taako sized her up. The door opened outwards. He could make the first melee attack of his life and tackle her through it. She might chase him. Could he run up the stairs and disappear into the keep? He was getting ahead of himself. Could he _run_ , period?

The bookcase at his back tilted forward, pressing into his shoulder blades. He froze in place and threw his arms out to hold the weight.

“Careful, dear,” Lydia called, sing-song. Her hand was extended; she casually wiggled her fingers at him. No focus, just nails sharpened to a point and studded with beads of lead glass. Taako hadn’t seen her cast.

“Not going to say anything?” she prompted. “I heard that you did a little begging. Can’t think how awful that must’ve been for you. I would never.”

“Listen,” Taako said. The bookcase tilted further. His knees were going to buckle. Books slid off the upper shelves and thudded to the floor on either side of him. One folded his ear on the way down and he winced. “Look, I was just—in the neighborhood, taking a walk. You know how it goes on—slow days. Weekends, am I right? Didn’t mean to disturb your—your private library? This is yours? I’d be more than happy to get out of your hair. _Thrilled_ , even.”

“Might be just a tad too late for you, darling.” Her grin widened further. The muscles at the edges of her cheeks seemed to draw back unnaturally far.

“Can we make some kind of deal? And you could uh, cut me a little slack? Specifically, on this whole—crushed-by-bookcase thing, let’s not do that, that’s a bad look.”

Lydia laughed, high and bright. “Well, I do love deals. What more do you think you have left to lose?”

A head phased through the door behind her. Something like a cowl over a white expanse that resolved itself into another elf. A male, with the same nose, ears, and haircut as Lydia. The same predatory grin. “Sorry Lyds, we have to cut our fun short. Someone’s got his panties in a wad again.”

Lydia rolled her eyes theatrically. “It’s like we’re surrounded by feckless children. Dear brother, you’re the only one I can count on.”

She crushed her hand into a fist. The bookcase came down. Taako’s head hit the floor.

* * *

The blackness was unremarkable. Everything had been black for days and days. Filtered through a bone-crushing fatigue that made his senses dull and his muscles tremble.

But there was a little boy sitting cross-legged in the blackness. His image swam: round glasses, an overlarge sweater rolled up at the elbows, socks up to his knees.

When he saw Taako, he grinned too. Taako shivered and took a step back. He could hear other voices, growing louder; not his sister, but that woman. Arguing.

“Hello, sir!” the boy called.

Then his image faded from view, and the blackness was absolute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one ended up a lot longer than planned. I always underestimate how many words a conversation will take.
> 
> Please kudos and comment. This story is so much work.

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to [ distractedkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractedKat/profile)!
> 
> Yell at me on tumblr @tansyfandom


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